


Demons & Halves

by rayemars



Category: Norse Mythology, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Blood, M/M, Mild Gore, Rape/Non-con Elements, Rough Sex, Violence, Xeno
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-15
Updated: 2015-06-22
Packaged: 2017-12-23 13:30:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 72,979
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/927027
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rayemars/pseuds/rayemars
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When the first demons started to disappear, Thor ignored the rumors of a sorcerer at large. This proved to be unwise.</p><p>Based on <a href="http://kisu-no-hi.tumblr.com/">Kisu-no-Hi</a>'s flawless <a href="http://kisu-no-hi.tumblr.com/post/38642761758/summoner-loki-and-his-demon-thor">demon summoner</a> <a href="http://kisu-no-hi.tumblr.com/post/39080536095/how-laughable-when-we-both-know-you-have-the-very">AU</a> drawings.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Unpleasant Meeting

~

It started as rumors. Demons began to disappear along the fringes of their lands: nests were found empty, previously defended territory was suddenly abandoned.

Young and strong and arrogant, Thor paid no attention. The outskirts were the area where the least-powerful scrabbled out their lives, a place where human summoners occasionally skulked for and snared those who were too puny to slaughter them for the insult. What occurred there didn't affect him.  
  
  
The tales began to edge closer. Demons he knew of, even if they were unfit for battle against him, began to desert their land. When scavengers slunk in to search for tastier prey, more nests were found empty, their holders vanished.

Thor noted the creeping pattern but ultimately dismissed it. The weak were always routed by those greater than them, and this was merely the sign of a demon trying to claim a territory vaster than it could hold. Sooner or later it, too, would meet its better.  
  
  
The news began to brush against his borders. Demons Thor knew and had defeated, but who impressed him enough he'd let them live, began to go missing. Those who'd escaped so far spoke of a sorcerer at the root of the desertions.

Thor was skeptical. No human could survive so deep into their lands, and no sorcerer was powerful enough to trap demons that had given **him** difficulty in a fight.

But something was out there--that was certain. Thor prowled his land more often, eager to match himself against such a strong creature.  
  
  
Those who shared borders with him disappeared.

There were no stories here: one day the wind carried their scents, and the next there was only blood and ash.

They weren't allies; demons had no such thing. But they weren't prey or enemies, either. They could enter his borders freely without being attacked. When he and they were in each others' presence, they hunted other things.

Thor paced his borders with greater care, shifting traversable routes so their paths ended among the many pitfalls his land held. He inspected his borders for signs of disruption while he worked, and fed his desire for retaliation by imagining his teeth sunk in the throat of this new threat.  
  
  
His territory was wide, a rugged and treacherous place of rock faces and whirlpools and storms that came without warning. An old temple sat on a mesa near its center, in ruins above but concealing an area deep below that pulsed with energy.

Over time Thor had battered his way down to the tunnel leading to it. Still later he'd unpuzzled its two outermost seals, but was left stuck when the third door's seal had too much magic in it. He'd also discovered that sleeping in the temple made his wounds heal quicker, and so had made his nest by the locked door.

His territory was an area of plentiful prey and great power, and he defended it well. He feared nothing.  
  
  
Thor uncovered the interloper's tracks on a mountain near one of his borders two days after the neighboring demon had vanished. They blended into the already-beaten path until they were barely visible; but Thor knew his land. He followed them warily, uneasy that there was no scent along the trail.

It went in the direction of one of his traps. Thor abandoned the tracks and took to the high ground instead, slowing as he came near the quicksand he'd diverted the path toward. When he reached it, he paused on the ridge to study the area below.

The crevasse was empty, the quicksand still. The only disruptions to the landscape were gouges in the opposite cliff-face, where Thor had scrabbled his way to safety when he first discovered the place years ago. The tracks disappeared at the edge of the quicksand, and there was still no scent of the intruder.

But when he concentrated, Thor caught the trace of something else: the reek of magic. To escape his trap, the intruder had had to cast a spell so powerful it must have exceeded the one he was using to conceal himself, and a fraction had spilled through.

It confirmed what he'd already suspected. Thor's tail curled tightly behind him before he shifted back from the overhang and continued forward, seeking where his quarry's trail resumed.

He recalled the previous rumors of a sorcerer. Magic was a rarity among demons--Thor's deliberate use of the temple to heal his injuries was closer to wielding it than many ever came. But sometimes a demon would return from a sorcerer's bondage with a few spells memorized or some other bit of magic gleaned. When he was a whelp, one had reappeared after eating her former master's heart. She'd gained enough power from it to force her way up from the outskirts, and settle and survive in the higher lands.

Thor had assumed no demon feeble enough to be caught by a human could make it all the way into his territory, no matter how much magic they'd learned. But he could be wrong. The wind still carried a trace of ashes as it gusted over his once-shared borders; maybe some demon had eaten an entire sorcerer this time.

Thor frowned at the thought. He knew his capabilities, his strength and its limits, and he didn't like the possibility of being overridden by some muttered words and stolen power. He glared down at the crevasse, still unable to find where his quarry's trail had resumed, but unwilling to go closer and risk entrapment on the low ground.

After another minute of silence, he snorted and turned around. Thor began to retrace his path closer to the ridge, searching for some hint of the intruder's tracks he'd previously missed. 

He passed beside a boulder and felt the cold slickness of magic snake up and over his skin.

Thor threw himself backwards, but the spell was already in place: he slammed against an invisible barrier. A few strides forward and to the side soon revealed he was trapped.

"So you're the great demon the others whisper about," a voice said above him.

Thor jerked his head up and glared at the sorcerer now visible atop the boulder. The man sat wrapped in a cloak with only his face in view. A tiny smirk played on his lips as he drawled, "The mighty Thor."

Thor's blood boiled as he realized he'd been caught by a human.

None of their kind should ever have made it this deep into the demons' lands. They shouldn't have lasted past the outskirts, let alone torn their way up the heights and through those as strong as his neighbors had been. None should have ever **dared** to set foot in his territory, or to speak his name with such mockery.

He crouched and threw himself at the boulder, striking near the base where it curved downward. The sorcerer startled and shouted as Thor shouldered it over.

The man leapt aside as the boulder crashed down. Thor grabbed a fistful of his cloak, knocking him off-balance and dragging him closer. As the sorcerer scrabbled to regain his footing, Thor lashed out, punching him hard in the ribs and sending him sprawling to the ground. He wrapped his tail around the human's leg and wrenched him closer.

As Thor pulled him into reach, the sorcerer twisted around and drove a dagger into his shoulder.

It jarred against bone, and the man flinched and let go reflexively. Thor roared with pain and struck him in the face.

His cheekbone cracked beneath Thor's fist and the human collapsed, head jarring against the rocks. Thor gripped his forehead and twisted it to the side before driving his teeth into the man's neck. The sorcerer choked on a scream.

Thor bit in deeper until the sound ceased and then wrenched his teeth to the side, ripping out most of the man's throat.

It was a messy and brutal kill. He was angry--at being caught, at the human's presumption, for the missing scents along his borders. Thor spat the flesh out, rejecting it as meat to be wasted, but he swallowed the blood without paying attention as he glared down at the sorcerer. Thor watched death glaze over his eyes and waited for the barrier to disappear.

Only it didn't, and a muffled curse came from the side.

Thor jerked around and found the man mostly upright and whole.

He was leaning against a staff and blood seeped from a shallow wound along his shoulder and throat; but he remained alive. He stood a few paces past the spot where Thor had turned around.

"Mighty indeed," the sorcerer muttered with a touch of appreciation, rubbing his cheek. "You **have** been worth the effort."

"Come closer, human, and I'll show you what becomes of one who tries to bind down Thor," he growled.

"Oh, no," the sorcerer murmured, straightening carefully before unfastening one of his vambraces. "I'd rather see what becomes of one who succeeds. Give it to me."

The decoy reached up and wrenched the dagger from Thor's shoulder. He jerked back in pain and shock--the thing was **dead** \--but then caught himself. Thor snarled and grabbed its leg as it fumbled out of the barrier, wrapping his tail around its ankle as well to drag it back.

The sorcerer rested his staff in the crook of his elbow and made a sundering motion with his hands. The decoy's leg separated from its hip.

Thor flung the limb aside in disgust as the thing pulled beyond the barrier and crawled toward the sorcerer, using its elbows to keep the dagger off the ground.

The glamour that had bound it together and changed its appearance unraveled as it went, peeling out from the gaping wound in its neck and the wider one at its hip. The flesh beneath drooped to reveal the bones working it, and it began to snag on the rocks.

The sorcerer sighed and made a halting motion. When the decoy sank inanimate to the ground, he went over and picked up the dagger.

The spell wrapped between the two dissipated, and Thor caught the scent of blood and meat and marrow at last. The stink of the corpse made him wrinkle his nose. It was dried and wrong-smelling--the bones and the flesh didn't all match--and all the blood in and on it was the sorcerer's own.

The smell of the sorcerer made his lips pull back from his teeth.

The man toed the decoy aside and settled on a rock. He leaned the staff against his shoulder before beginning to carefully wipe Thor's blood onto his fingertips. 

Thor tensed as he realized just what the sorcerer intended. The barrier wasn't the entrapment spell--it was only there to hold him back during the **real** one. He spat the remaining blood in his mouth on the ground and scrubbed at his lips and chin violently.

"Too late," the sorcerer smirked. "You already swallowed."

Thor spat out more bloody saliva anyway, a growl building in his throat as he watched the sorcerer carefully suck the blood off his fingers.

He left what was on his thumb. The man switched the dagger between his hands, taking care not to smear the remaining blood on the handle or let it drip to the ground, and then nicked each fingertip until a dot of blood welled up. Thor bashed and scraped and felt along the barrier, hunting for a weak point, as the sorcerer mixed Thor's blood into his cuts.

The man rubbed his fingertips together briefly once he was finished, and then pushed the edge of his sleeve back. Thor slammed a fist on the barrier, growling relentlessly, as the sorcerer pressed the dagger's tip into the center of his wrist and rubbed the last dribble of blood along the nick.

The sorcerer licked away the stray blood on his fingertips and then caught his gaze.

" _Thor_ ," he said, in a voice different from before. It curled over Thor's skin, and then slipped into the wound in his shoulder and crawled beneath it. Thor shuddered despite himself. " _My name is Loki, and you will answer my summons from this day forth_."

"I will kill you and leave you for the scavengers," Thor snarled.

Loki smirked. "Not with this spell standing."

A moment later he shifted and touched the skin below his throat with a grimace. "I require water," he said, picking up his vambrace and staff with his uninjured hand. "Take me to the nearest clean source."

The barrier beneath his fist dispersed, releasing him. Thor surged forward.

He grabbed the sorcerer's neck and hauled him off the ground as the man choked, dropping the vambrace and barely keeping a hold on his staff. Thor tightened his grip, intending to snap Loki's spine before he could work any more magic.

His legs nearly buckled under a sudden, violent strain, as if something had struck him from behind. Thor locked his knees and struggled to tighten his fist further, and abruptly gagged when his throat burned as though he'd swallowed a molten stone. It was all he could do to keep from collapsing to the ground and choking for air; he couldn't help dropping his arm enough that the sorcerer's feet returned to solid rock.

Loki smiled at him with closed lips, his mouth stained with Thor's blood.

"Not," he managed slowly, voice hoarse, "with this spell standing."

Thor bared his teeth again and kept his grip on the sorcerer's neck, trying to ignore how the pain made his arm shake.

" **Half-breed** ," he spat. Loki's cowl had fallen back, his exposed ears making plain what the stink of his blood had already revealed. "You think yourself better than me?"

The sorcerer narrowed his eyes contemptuously.

He whacked Thor's wrist with his staff. Thor jerked and released his throat, and the half-breed shoved his arm away.

It was easier for him to do than Thor could stomach. But the pain finally began to subside as Loki stepped back.

"I'd hoped you would think of a better insult than the rest of your kind," the sorcerer croaked, before coughing and rubbing his neck gingerly. "More the fool I," he muttered, and ordered, "Water, demon. Lead me to it."

When he only glared, Loki gave him another patronizing smirk. "Lead me to it," he repeated, "unless you'd rather I compelled you?

" _Thor_ ," he finished. Thor tensed as magic began to slither through his blood.

He grit his jaw, but at last jerked his head to the side. "That way, over the rise," Thor bit off. "There's a stream."

The slow, superior smile that crossed the sorcerer's lips made Thor want to slash the mouth from his face.

The half-breed turned and started toward the rise, either expecting him to follow or not caring if he didn't. It wouldn't matter either way--Thor knew he could be summoned into his presence at any time he chose now. Distance would be no deterrent if the sorcerer was skilled enough to have made it this far in the first place.

And yet.

Thor's territory was not like that of the lesser demons Loki had tricked and killed his way through to reach here.

Thor didn't warn him of the sudden drop into the crevasse on three-fourths of the other side of the rise, and felt fractionally gratified when stones clattered a few moments later and he heard Loki curse as he caught himself.


	2. Unpleasant Magic

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the only chapter with non-consensual sex, though the general element remains given the power the spell gives Loki over Thor.

~

He abandoned the sorcerer immediately, hoping that the half-breed would get himself killed by the landscape or one of the animals that roamed the area.

But Loki turned out to be capable of defending himself against the predators that scented his blood, and able to worm his way loose of the hazards he slipped into while also learning how to spot them in advance. Thor shadowed him from a distance and watched with a scowl as Loki carefully maneuvered around crevasses and steam geysers, and dodged a wildcat that leapt down at him from a cliff before killing it with an inaudible spell.

The sorcerer prodded the beast for a few moments, and then straightened and stared out at the horizon for much longer.

Eventually he settled down to slaughter the animal. Thor left him there.

He slept in his nest in the temple that night. When he woke the next dawn, the wound in his shoulder was scabbed over and ached far less than before.

Thor returned to the place he'd left Loki and found to his irritation that the sorcerer had survived the night. He tracked the footprints that led from the remnants of the rough camp until he found Loki, and then watched him from afar again. He soon determined that despite how often the half-breed had to veer his path to avoid dangers, he was traveling in a specific direction and heading fixedly deeper into his territory.

When Thor realized that Loki was making his way toward the temple, he stopped following and went straight to him.

He used a shorter route to cut the sorcerer off before sliding down a rocky ridge to land in front of him. Loki glanced at him briefly as he lifted a hand to shield his face from tumbling stones; but otherwise he gave no acknowledgement of Thor's presence and continued on his way.

The disregard and arrogance made Thor's hands curl into fists.

But he remembered the pain when he'd attacked the man yesterday, and grit his jaw and forced himself to wait. He had to either find a way to get free of the spell first, or be content to see Loki killed by someone other than himself.

Accepting that still took effort. Thor's hands stayed clenched at his sides as he stalked behind the sorcerer.

Loki had changed his tunic since yesterday; the new one had a high collar that hid the wound and most of the bruises along his neck. He'd also rolled up his cloak and tucked the edges into his belt, muffling the tassels' clatter. The bottom of his staff was muddy and grit-smeared.

Thor stayed behind him as they hiked in silence, near enough and for long enough that any sane-minded prey should have tried to flee or turned to fight. The sorcerer did neither.

They finally crested the hillock that brought the temple into full view. All that remained was a trek into the narrow valley surrounding the mesa it stood on and then a climb up the steep face of it--unless Loki went around the long way and discovered the stone bridge that crossed the divide.

When the sorcerer turned to the right and started forward, Thor wrapped his tail around his leg. "No."

"It speaks," Loki drawled, looking over his shoulder. "I doubt you're warning me of any impending danger along that route, so...'no' what, precisely?"

"You aren't welcome there," Thor said lowly.

Loki smiled. "If I went only where I was welcome, I'd go nowhere at all." He set the butt of his staff against Thor's tail. "Release me."

"The only thing that enters my nest besides me is food," Thor threatened. "And that doesn't leave again."

Loki exhaled in annoyance. "Have you any idea the kind of power lying in that place?" he demanded, making a brief gesture toward the temple.

Thor narrowed his eyes. "I have enough."

"Then you should realize I won't be stopped," Loki replied, and pressed his staff down harder. An icy chill sliced into Thor's tail.

He wrenched it away, and Loki moved out of his reach. Thor examined his tail for a few moments and found no visible damage despite the lingering prickling, and started after the man.

Loki found the bridge. Thor followed too closely behind him as he crossed it, tail curled under the stone for added balance, and smirked as Loki trod his way carefully along the narrow link and muttered vile curses about him below his breath.

His smirk widened when the half-breed finally reached the mesa and took several rapid steps away from the edge, the bridge, and Thor before pausing to shake his cloak out from his belt in an effort to restore his dignity.

Thor easily crossed the last couple steps onto the temple's grounds, and then went to one of the tallest standing pillars and climbed it. He settled on the top and watched as the sorcerer slowly paced the area, occasionally tapping the butt of his staff against the paving stones and the walls.

The mouth of the tunnel Thor had unearthed was well-concealed; but he was sure Loki's goal was the underground area, and he didn't intend to give the entrance's location away by guarding it. And this perch gave him the widest view of the temple as the sorcerer meandered through it.

Loki spent a significant amount of time examining an empty room. Thor watched with grudging curiosity through the partially-collapsed roof as the sorcerer circled its perimeter again and again, tracing invisible patterns along the slabs of the walls and occasionally rapping his knuckles against the cracks in the mortar.

When dusk began to encroach, Loki rummaged through his pack briefly. He latched it again without removing anything, and then left the room and made his way straight to the hidden tunnel.

Thor scowled and leapt off the pillar.

He caught up to Loki as the man was shimmying through a gap between the broken stones and columns Thor had piled up before the entrance. Thor waited until he'd finally forced his way in before lifting one of the largest slabs and following. The half-breed rolled his eyes as Thor dropped the stone behind him, but said nothing.

The barricade left the tunnel murky; but the stone in Loki's staff glowed enough to cast a dim stretch of light, and the sorcerer made his way down warily, tapping his staff against the ground before him to sound out any sudden drops or pits.

When he reached the part of the tunnel that had been blocked until Thor had battered and clawed it open, Loki glanced at the ragged gap in the wall with a derisive snort. He paused at the sight of the first unlocked door, however, and examined its seal with care. Thor narrowed his eyes when the sorcerer gave him a brief, considering look before continuing to the second.

Loki left that seal after another close study, and stepped around the pile of pelts that filled the passageway between it and the next. He kicked aside a cracked-open bone as he did--a leftover from several days ago, when Thor and one of the neighboring demons had hunted and slaughtered a bear and then brought several of the bones back here to suck out the marrow later, after mating.

Thor remained restless as Loki paused in front of the third door with a low hum. He couldn't hold still with an intruder standing in his nest right before him; but the corridor was too narrow to pace in for long, even on all fours. At last he settled into an agitated crouch and glared at the sorcerer as he scrutinized the seal.

"If you have nothing better to do, go bring back something to eat," Loki said without looking over.

Thor scowled. "Feed yourself."

"I don't care to waste my supplies when you can do the work instead," he answered. "You've been dogging my shadow all day, so you must be hungry as well." The corner of his mouth quirked. "Will it be that much trouble for you to hunt something sufficient for two instead of one? Perhaps the rumors about your prowess were exaggerated."

"I don't like you," Thor said flatly. "I won't feed you."

Loki shrugged and focused back on the seal. " _Do it regardless_ ," he ordered.

Thor twitched at the feel of magic stirring sluggishly beneath his skin. He growled low, and then--when Loki didn't look up--jerked around and strode out of the tunnel.  
  
  
When he returned, the sorcerer had broken through the third seal and moved farther in to another door. Thor observed the new area with interest for a few moments before throwing the hare he was carrying against the wall next to Loki. The sorcerer eyed it as it sank to the ground, and then turned and looked disapprovingly at him.

"What?" Thor asked with a sharp grin. "Can't a half-breed stomach handle raw meat?"

Loki gave him a lengthy condescending look before reaching for his pack.

He skinned and gutted the rabbit before pulling out a long match. The sorcerer lit it with his fingernail and dropped it to the ground, and then cut a hunk of flesh from the bones before skewering it on his knife.

"The well's sealed up," Loki said as he held the meat over the flame. "Do you have anything to carry water with?"

"No," Thor replied, because he never wanted for water in his lands.

Loki huffed and pulled a gourd from his pack. He left the meat in the fire as he rinsed his hands and then held the gourd out to Thor. "Go bring me some, then."

"Go yourself," Thor answered. "I already ate and drank. There's a stream only a short distance from the bridge," he added with a smirk. Night had fallen to reveal a new moon, and Thor liked the idea of the sorcerer trying to cross the narrow stone arch with only the light of the stars and his staff. If he fell and eventually died, the spell would end.

Loki exhaled theatrically. "You are not a quick learner," he commented. "How dull."

He cast the gourd onto Thor's lap. " _Go fetch me clean water_ ," he demanded.

Beneath the magic, Thor caught a faint hint of weariness in his voice.

He tilted his head and inspected the sorcerer carefully in the firelight, searching for more traces of exhaustion or weakness. Loki narrowed his eyes and said, "Now, demon."

Thor studied him for a moment longer before turning and going.  
  
  
He heard Loki opening the fourth seal as he returned. Thor tossed the gourd at the sorcerer as he entered the new area; Loki caught it with a brief fumble.

Behind the fourth door stood a fifth. Loki muttered as he dragged his pack through the doorway and looked it over, but the aggravated noise turned to a quiet whistle a moment later. Thor noticed the match was still burning on the ground.

He crouched and sniffed it, and caught the tang of magic beneath the sulfur and meat before the heat forced him back.

Loki made a tching noise and stepped away from the seal. "This will take more time," he decided, resting his staff against the wall. "I'll begin tomorrow."

"Will it take more time because it's complicated," Thor asked, still crouching by the fire and watching him, "or because you're weary?"

Loki gave him another fleeting, considering look, his face half-shadowed by his cowl. Then he reached out and shut the door between them.

Thor threw dirt over the fire to put it out and claimed the edible remains of the hare for himself, and returned to his nest.

He shoved the third door closed before carrying a heavy stone slab down the tunnel and wedging it in front of it. He doubted he could leave Loki trapped in there for long, but it would prevent the half-breed from creeping up on him while he slept.  
  
  
He was startled awake by the sound of Loki's voice inside his ears. _Thor. Open the door._

Disoriented, Thor rolled from his nest into a crouch, teeth bared. It took him a few moments to realize Loki wasn't there.

There was a sharp, impatient rap on the other side of the door. Thor shook his head to clear it, then hissed out a breath and went to push away the stone.

Loki gave him an irritable look when he shoved the door open and strode past. Thor returned it with a smirk as he let the slab drop heavily to the ground, the thud echoing up the corridor.

After he returned, Loki told him to gather more food and water. Thor eyed the sorcerer long enough to decide that the night's rest had restored his energy, and left before he was forced.

Without the compulsion, he found he wasn't driven to obey and return as soon as possible. Thor caught breakfast for himself and then paced around his borders, intending to keep any rumormongering scavengers out even if the true threat had already settled itself within.

The sorcerer glowered when he finally returned in the middle of the day with the refilled gourd and another small hare. "Don't try to outwit me, demon," Loki snapped, reaching for a match.

"I didn't try," Thor grinned, earning another glare.

While the man dug into his barely-cooked meat, Thor studied him in the half-light. Something in Loki had changed: there was a feverish touch to the sorcerer's expression, and he continued to stare at the seal as he ate, barely tasting his food.

This seal was much different from the others. At first Thor thought it was recessed; but when he looked harder, he realized the darkness around the lock wasn't natural. It didn't change even when the firelight wavered.

"What is that?" he asked, jerking his chin at the seal.

"Powerful," Loki answered, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand and tossing the last of the bones beside the fire.

Thor snorted. "So powerful, you don't know how to explain it better?"

"So powerful," Loki riposted, "that I would rather solve it than play verbal games with you." He stood, returning to the seal and ending the conversation.

Thor picked up one of the bones and gnawed on it absently, and wondered what the common lifespan was for sorcerers who lacked the sense to avoid antagonizing dangerous things.

He didn't know. But he **did** know what the lifespan of this particular half-breed would be, once he had his way about it.  
  
  
Thor watched Loki work for a while longer, gnawing some of the bones and breaking several more as he did, and grew increasingly restless as the fire died out and Loki shifted his staff closer to rely on the glowing gem. His nest was a good place to sleep and mate and lick wounds, but it was a tedious area to just sit in. And the sorcerer wasn't doing anything interesting; he murmured to himself and tilted his head this way and that as he looked at the seal, and sometimes he shifted his hands or prodded at the edges of the darkness--but nothing that Thor could see happened in response.

He disliked the idea of leaving the sorcerer unchecked in his nest yet again, but eventually his boredom won out. Thor left the tunnel and the ruins, and went out into the wider and more interesting parts of his territory.  
  
  
When he returned that evening with the lame leg of a wildcat he'd caught for dinner, Thor found the sorcerer asleep in the half-camp he'd made inside the passage to the fifth door. Thor dropped the bloody leg unceremoniously on his head and left snickering as Loki spluttered awake and cursed. The sorcerer kicked the door shut behind him.  
  
  
Later that night, the smell of cooking meat woke him. Thor forced himself to rise and drag away the slab he'd barred the door with; he still recalled the unsettling sensation of Loki's voice within his head, and didn't want to hear it a second time.

He expected the sorcerer to smirk victoriously when he eventually pushed through the door. But Loki paid no attention to it, or him. Instead he strode rapidly down the tunnel, carrying the burning remains of a match.

Thor followed him to the empty room Loki had examined so raptly on his arrival, and watched in bemusement as the sorcerer pulled a spade from his pack and began digging in the ground.

"You're damaging my land," Thor said, doubting the intruding half-breed would grasp the significance of the threat. Loki ignored him.

Thor studied the man as he dug, and noted that although Loki eventually slung off his cloak, he didn't loosen or remove any more of his clothes, not even when the work began to make him sweat. He sent Thor to refill his gourd often, fraying Thor's patience with each trip until he rummaged through the ruins and finally found an unbroken stone jar to carry more water with.

Thor tried to recall if any markings or deformities had been visible on the sorcerer earlier. But most of the skin now covered by his collar had been smeared with blood, and Thor had been too furious to pay attention at the time.

By the final time he returned with the refilled jar and gourd, Loki was pulling bones out of the pit he'd dug.

Thor set the vessels down with a frown. He knew humans had lived in these lands once, and the grave-robbing itself mattered little to him. He'd come across unearthed or upended burials before and just tossed the bones into the nearest crevice.

But he disliked the free way the sorcerer was wrecking his territory. And he felt a vague restlessness at how carelessly Loki treated something affecting half of himself.

"You lack any shame, don't you?" he asked. "Human or demon. You're less than both."

Loki rolled his eyes as he tossed another bone onto the small pile on his cloak. "If the disruption of a human grave upsets you, demon, I will have a hard time believing you think so little of my blood."

"I think little of your arrogance," Thor replied. "What are you doing?"

"Gathering ingredients," Loki answered. "Go clear a decent path into the corridor. I can't squirm through carrying these."

Thor left, but instead went to hunt for a meal as his annoyance overrode his curiosity and led him to remember that the hyena he'd devoured during a water-fetching trip was long gone.

Thor caught a few more of the small creatures that made their homes around the temple because he considered them unworthy prey and larger predators were wary of coming too close to his nest, and brought them back with him. When he returned, Loki was sitting on a broken pillar by the tunnel's entrance with his cloak bundled in his lap, his expression irritable until he noticed the food.

Thor wrinkled his nose when Loki skewered his portion over the fire after it was skinned and gutted, and wondered how long it was going to take before the reek of cooked meat fully dissipated. He would have left, but the sorcerer was finally doing something interesting again.

While the meat roasted, Loki separated the bones he'd dug up. He set one pile aside on his cloak, and then began to beat the rest between two stones. By the time he finished that evening, they were worn down to powdery shards.

Loki gathered the powder carefully into his palm and picked out flecks of rock before transferring it to a small pouch. Thor, who'd grown mostly bored again, watched.

"Now what?" he demanded.

"Now I am going to bathe," Loki replied, clapping the rest of the grit from his hands.  
  
  
Loki spent the next day binding the remaining bones back into the form of a hand and arm.

Thor prowled his territory, killed one demon who'd intruded a brief way inside, and nearly chased another over the border and onto a former neighbor's ground before he stopped himself.

To defend that area would be to claim it. The land he already held was more than sufficient for his needs, and as large as he could maintain without wearying himself to the point of creating weakness and an opening.

And defending it wouldn't bring his former neighbor out to help.

Thor still had to force himself to back away, and turned his anger to hunting instead.

He dragged back a beast large enough to feed both himself and Loki for that evening and into the next day. Thor had grown tired of the constant trips to acquire the small and weak prey the man was barely worth, and he still disliked leaving Loki unattended in the very center of his nest. But more importantly, it was growing clear that the sorcerer was nearly done with his preparations.

Despite everything, Thor's interest had been caught. The power that seeped through the temple, like a draft of warm air he'd long been accustomed to, had become noticeably stronger since Loki had cracked open the past two seals. Thor wanted to see what was behind this next one, too--and if that meant he had to tolerate the man's presence until then, he could.

The tunnel stank of the half-breed's blood when he re-entered. Loki had smeared a paste of it and the bone shards along the fifth seal, and painted more over the remade hand. He sat against the wall, sipping from his gourd, as Thor looked over everything. In the sickly green light of the staff, he was visibly paler.

Thor eyed him for a moment longer, and then shrugged the beast off his shoulder.

He twisted and ripped it in half, and was pleased at the expression that flickered across the half-breed's face as he watched. Thor dumped the side with teeth and more cartilage and less meat next to him. "That's yours."

"Move it away," Loki said flatly, leaving Thor annoyed that his voice, though fatigued, lacked any of the uneasiness that had been in his eyes. "The blood can't mix."  
  
  
The sorcerer kept unnatural hours. He soon fell asleep without eating, while light was still in the sky; and he woke Thor once again in the dead of night with the stench of cooking meat. Thor scowled and buried his face into one of the pelts, trying to block it out.

He was half-asleep again when the power that hummed along the tunnel shifted to a heavy, audible thrum.

Thor shook himself awake and slung the slab from the door before loping through to find Loki.

He stopped short at the threshold of the fourth door. The magic that sizzled beyond it was so thick it pressed against his skin, and his tail curled up instinctively to protect his eyes. Thor squinted past it into the dim room.

Loki's staff sat upright beside the fifth door, and a fire burned less than an arm's length away--but the corridor was murkier than ever. Loki stood in front of the seal, pushing the hand he'd crafted into it as he muttered under his breath. Darkness spilled out around the bones, suffusing the room.

Thor took a step back, his instincts warning him to turn and flee up the tunnel and across the bridge before the sorcerer collapsed the mesa atop them both. Magic wasn't physical, wasn't tangible to him; he couldn't grab hold of it and overpower it like he could prey or enemies. He couldn't defend against this.

And yet. He hadn't fled in the face of anything since he was young; and Thor couldn't bring himself to listen to the voice of sense urging him to do so now.

He took another step back and crouched, ready to spring forward and gore whatever lurched out of the murk. Loki twisted the proxy hand in deeper. As he continued to spit out his spell, Thor caught the edge of fear in his voice.

He reconsidered leaving.

Then, almost lost beneath the sizzle and the chanting, there was a quiet crack. The darkness evaporated, and the power pent up behind the seal pulsed and rolled out through the tunnel in its place, sending a shiver up Thor's spine as it washed over him. Loki sagged against the wall, pale and sweating. His hands shook as they fell to his sides.

After several heartbeats, Thor slowly began to leave his crouch, still ready to spring at the first sign of an enemy. Loki reached out and tugged the hand free of the seal.

The bones that had been encased in the darkness were half-melted. Loki stared at them for a breath, and then began to laugh to himself--a soft, amused noise that did more to convince Thor the sorcerer was mad than anything before.

Loki dropped the proxy negligently to the floor, the bones cracking on the stone, and wiped his face. Thor straightened fully.

"If you're seeking death, you could simply ask," he said. "What was **that**?"

"It would be a waste of breath to explain," Loki replied, and pushed the door open.

Thor watched warily as the sorcerer picked up his staff and entered, and didn't move. But no screams came from within, nor was there the sound of anything attacking. All he heard was Loki's footfalls as the man walked around slowly.

Eventually Thor rummaged through Loki's pack until he found the matches. He lit one from the fire before making his way through the door.

The area so intensely guarded by the seals turned out to be a storeroom. Thor was disappointed at first by the human insipidness; but then he recalled the power that had crawled free, and shook the disillusionment off. He headed further inside, padding up to the place where Loki was examining an oversized war hammer.

Loki ran his palm over the butt of the handle, and then crouched to caress the head of it with a low, appreciative noise. Thor eyed the hammer dubiously, automatically suspicious of something the sorcerer found so appealing.

Loki stayed that way for a time longer, rubbing his thumb against the hammer's head, as Thor explored the rest of the storeroom while keeping the sorcerer in his side vision. Eventually he saw the man glance back up and eye the handle, easily longer than his calf and nearly as thick around.

The sorcerer huffed and didn't lift it. Instead, he called over his shoulder: "Demon. Can you wield this?"

Thor returned grudgingly, still distrustful. "What trap's on it?"

Loki rolled his eyes. "None."

"Then why don't you take it?" Thor prodded.

He didn't bother to answer, because when standing side-by-side they could both see clearly why he was bypassing the weapon. The sorcerer might nearly match his height, but his sinewy frame was far different from Thor's bulk. Thor smirked as Loki turned away, and gripped the hilt.

He jerked back at the sizzle of energy beneath his palm. Thor started to twist around and curse at the man for lying; but then he paused. There was no lingering ache in his hand, and no sign of a burn--and when he stopped to consider it, the energy felt familiar.

It felt like the power that had first drawn him to this place, and down the tunnel and past the wall and up to the seals.

Thor slid his hand carefully back around the handle. The buzz remained; but after a few breaths it eased until it was less than a tingle, little more than a faint warmth the metal shouldn't possess so deep below the earth. He dropped the match on the ground and hefted the hammer up. Thor decided that the energy wasn't distracting enough to hamper its use, and swung it a few times to gauge the balance.

"Hm," Loki said, watching him from a distance. He held a silver brooch in one hand. "Were you born here?"

Thor narrowed his eyes. "Why?"

"Curiosity," the sorcerer answered. "It takes to you."

Thor looked at the hammer again, trying to determine if Loki was implying it had sentience.

"...No," he finally answered. "I fought the demon who used to hold this area for fun, when I was younger. When I was leaving, I sensed this place." He swung it again. "I went back, and challenged him and killed him, and took it as mine."

"A blood claim through the land," Loki murmured. "That could do it."

The man jerked his chin briefly at the hammer. "It's yours. Keep it with you," Loki ordered, before turning his attention back to the brooch.

Thor snorted and rested the hammer against his shoulder. "You're generous with possessions that aren't yours to give."

"I opened this room, and those who sealed it up are clearly long dead," Loki responded. "Everything in here is mine."

Thor's fingers tightened on the handle. "You forget this is my nest," he warned. "What's within it is mine, not yours."

"You are mine," Loki answered, looking at him with a small smirk. "As is all you claim as your own."

Thor stared at him for a long minute, and then shifted his grip and let the hammer drop to his side.

Loki ignored the threat and frowned at the brooch before pinning it to his tunic underneath the folds of his cowl, as if annoyed that it clashed with the rest of his ornaments. When Thor stepped closer, he turned aside, walking farther into the storeroom. Thor took a wide stride forward and swung the hammer, aiming so that the head arced out in front of Loki.

He stopped it short when the handle was a hair's breadth from the sorcerer's side, leaving Loki pinned between them, with little space between his free side and a nearby pillar to wriggle away.

Loki glanced down. "Impressive."

Thor pulled his hand in so that the head was pressed against Loki's stomach. The sorcerer set his feet, but didn't step backward or turn toward him.

"Don't underestimate me, half-breed," Thor said quietly. 

"I'll not," Loki replied. "Any more than I'll underestimate myself."

"You're weary," Thor told him. "Lacking blood. Spent of energy. You hide it well--but not well enough." He tugged the hammer sharply, and this time Loki stumbled backward a step before catching himself.

"You falter," Thor continued knowingly. "And so will your spell."

Loki laughed at him.

"The spell is set, demon," he scorned. "The blood exchanged. Your fighting it may wear at me, but the only thing that can **break** it is my death. And since that's the very thing it's designed to withhold from you, well...." Loki shrugged a shoulder.

"So you claim," Thor retorted. "I know of demons caught by your kind before. They always got free in the end."

"Ah, but they were not truly **my** kind, were they?" Loki replied softly. "I alone made it all the way to you. The sorcerers you've heard tale of are nothing like me--and neither are their spells."

Thor realized abruptly that he couldn't see Loki's hands.

He wrenched the hammer to the side, jerking it out of the man's reach. The movement was so fast that for a moment Loki's hand--hidden by his cloak, tracing something on the head--was pulled with it.

Loki let his arm drift to his side and turned to face him as Thor examined the hammer in the dim light. He could see and smell a dab of the sorcerer's blood on the metal and caught the tang of magic alongside it, but that was all.

"What have you done?" he demanded.

"Nothing much," Loki replied. "A bit of spellwork, just to ensure my blood is a taste your hammer never craves." He smirked. "Behave, and I'll do the same for you, so it can't be taken and used against you."

Thor flung the weapon angrily to the side, barely hearing it fracture the ground where it landed. " **You** \--"

He gripped Loki's cowl and slammed the man against the pillar. Loki's head cracked on the stone, and Thor felt a sharp stab of pain pierce through his knuckles as the man winced. His grip loosened reflexively.

"You are a slow learner," Loki drawled.

Thor shoved up against him, pinning Loki to the pillar and forcing the man to snatch at his staff when it was almost knocked from his grip.

"If you think you can tame **me** , little half-breed, you will learn how wrong you are," he growled. Thor pushed him harder against the stone, stopping only when a pressure in his chest began to shorten his breath. "I **will** get free, and then I'll show you just how wrong you were." He bared his teeth. "You won't mock then. The only thing you'll do is beg for me to end you."

Loki had tensed against him, but beneath his palms Thor could feel the trembling that the man was trying to hide. He pulled his lips back farther, and warned: "And I will not give you that mercy."

Loki shuddered again.

"Keep your dreams, demon," he said, breath short. "You'll need their comfort. Release me."

"Make me," Thor replied, starting to grin. "If my fighting wearies you, then I'll make you compel me until you're worn through." He tilted his head and studied Loki in the gem's glow, taking in the pallor of his face and the fevered tinge that had returned to his eyes. "Let's see how well your magic holds when you're exhausted."

Loki laughed again. "It will hold. **Release** me."

"Make me," Thor repeated, and forced him harder against the pillar, ignoring the pressure in his chest.

Loki squirmed sharply this time, sucking in a ragged breath and trying to wrench free. Thor's grin widened--and then he caught the scent building beneath the man's sweat and tension and fatigue. He studied Loki's face, tilted down and away as the man struggled to control his panting, and frowned.

Thor knocked Loki's cowl back with a horn and pressed his nose to the skin behind the half-breed's ear, breathing in where the blood pulsed close to the surface. Loki jerked and twisted against his hands. "Enough--"

Thor kicked the sorcerer's foot out abruptly to the side. He made a wordless insulted sound, and then gasped when Thor wedged a thigh between his legs.

Loki's cock was hard through the layers of his tunic and pants. When Thor shifted his knee, brushing the tunic's hanging edge aside and pressing closer, he could feel a damp spot beginning to spread along the pants' cloth. Loki swallowed heavily.

". . . You are a sick, flawed creature," Thor muttered. "This pleases you? To be held down like prey, threatened, to know you live or die as I choose?" He pushed his thigh up hard and Loki arched against him, choking down a whine. "Is there really any demon blood in you at all?"

Loki swallowed again, and tilted his chin down to leer at him.

"It pleases me," he said, teeth showing in a feral grin, "to know that you want to rip me open, and **cannot**."

Loki wrapped a hand around his thigh and rutted down against him, this time not holding back his moan. Thor jolted.

Loki laughed at him, mouth still twisted, and did it again and then again, digging a heel against the base of the pillar to push down harder. He grunted with pleasure as he did, and Thor hissed out a breath as his cock stirred.

He kicked the sorcerer's other foot aside as well. As Loki fumbled for balance, Thor seized his waist and rocked roughly against him, shoving him up the pillar and nearly dragging his feet from the ground.

Loki let out a sharp cry as he scrabbled to grab hold of Thor's waist and balance on his toes. Thor noted with amusement that he still clasped his staff, and rolled his hips up again, slow and heavy and promising.

Loki pressed his head back against the pillar with a long groan. Thor realized the pressure in his chest was fading.

He snorted derisively. "If you're seeking to be fucked, just ask. I don't mind you lying beneath me stripped before you're doing it covered in your own blood."

He pulled Loki down sharply against him the next time he ground up, and smiled at the sharp keen the man made as his balance wobbled. "Or both."

Thor bit down hard on the joint of Loki's neck and felt the man tense. His smile widened as he pulled back to see the sorcerer's expression, tightening his grip and jerking Loki's hips against him once more. "I'll enjoy both."

Loki laughed again, short and breathless.

"Ah, no," he managed. "I don't care to get so messy tonight. I'll take something simpler."

He grabbed one of Thor's horns and yanked down. "On your knees, demon. Let's see if your mouth can do more than threaten."

Thor snarled, hands clenching until Loki winced. The pressure in his chest returned abruptly, and Thor coughed before grinding out, "You think I'll--"

" _Down, Thor_ ," Loki ordered, and he flinched as the scar on his shoulder began to ache anew.

He stayed on his feet, glaring, until the blood in his legs burned so much he was sure his flesh was blistering. Finally Thor sank to one knee, hissing in furious relief as the pain began to cool. He kept the angry grip on Loki's waist.

The sorcerer smirked down at him.

"That's better," he murmured shakily. Thor could hear the strain in Loki's voice and see the sweat beaded along his brow; but the pressure in his chest and the magic slithering through his blood remained as steady as ever. He watched, eyes narrowed and lips pulled back over his teeth, as Loki carefully lowered his staff to the ground before slipping his hands beneath his tunic to unlace his pants.

The man exhaled as he tugged his prick free, stroking himself a few times before dragging his hand away. He prised Thor's fingers from his waist and pushed his hands down to his thighs.

"There, demon," Loki said, leaning back against the pillar. "The rest should be simple enough."

When Thor growled, Loki half-smirked and laid a palm on one horn. "Use your teeth if you like," he murmured. "All it will do is remind you you can't harm me."

Thor flexed his hands sharply, and Loki hummed under his breath.

A moment later Thor shoved the sorcerer's tunic up and bit him hard on the stomach. Loki gasped and jerked against him, and Thor pinned his hip.

He rucked the tunic higher, the belt's tassels clattering in the fabric as he pushed, and bit down on Loki's exposed belly once more. Thor worried the flesh between his teeth but stopped before he drew blood; he could tell Loki used that for his magic, and no sound the sorcerer might make was worth the risk of being bound even tighter than he already was.

"Down," Loki ordered, panting as he rocked forward against Thor's grip. Thor let go of the tunic and pressed his forearm across Loki's ribcage to trap him further against the pillar. The sorcerer grunted and dug his heels and elbows against the stone, pushing back.

Thor dragged his teeth along Loki's stomach, listening to his breath shorten as he squirmed and fought, and then bit down on the edge of his navel and tugged hard before releasing it.

"I **will** get free," he repeated heavily, staring up at the half-breed and squeezing his fingers around his hip, feeling the flesh indent under his claws. "And then I will rip you open and apart, piece by piece. I'll show every one to you as I lap the blood away. I'll take your eyes last, so you see everything."

Loki snickered and sunk back against the pillar. "Take my eyes last, and my heart will have already stopped, leaving me dead and your dramatics pointless." He pushed on Thor's horn again. "Down. Use your mouth for something other than ill-planned promises."

Thor bit the tender skin below his navel, and Loki hissed and strained against him. He shoved his horn. " _Down_."

Thor felt the tremor run through Loki as the magic ate further at him. He dropped his head and wrenched the sorcerer's pants down his hips before biting hard on the inside of his thigh. Loki cried out and then cursed him violently.

He seized Thor's horns and jerked his head back. Thor grinned up at him with thinned lips, pleased at the sorcerer's riled expression even while infuriated by his domineering grip.

" _Thor_ ," Loki ordered, shaking with the effort, " _suck my cock_." He tightened his hands around Thor's horns to steady himself. " **Now**."

There was no loophole. Thor grunted and tried to shake Loki's hands off; but the sorcerer only grasped tighter. He growled low in his throat as a slow burn of magic worked its way up his shoulder to his neck, and at last bent his head to suck the tip of Loki's prick.

Loki moaned in relief when Thor finally took him in his mouth. He jerked Thor's head closer as he rocked his hips, making him choke as he was dragged farther onto Loki's cock. Thor cursed and splayed both hands over the man's hips, forcing him back, and then ran his teeth threateningly over the fragile skin. The sorcerer responded with that same soft, mad chuckle, the sound nearly wrenched from him as he slumped against the pillar; and then he jerked on Thor's horns again.

Loki used him harshly, and Thor coughed and snarled and dug claws into his hips until he bled, and then choked on a whine at the answering ache that hit his stomach as if he'd retched for a day after eating tainted meat.

Loki made a quiet noise at that, and slid his palms over Thor's horns to tangle his fingers into his hair before fucking deeper into his throat. Thor gagged again, caught off guard, and then again when Loki pushed even deeper. He howled in impotent rage, the sound stifled around the sorcerer's cock.

Loki shivered and came.

Thor shoved away from him, coughing and spitting. Loki slouched against the pillar as the last of his climax wracked through him, barely managing to keep on his feet.

Thor dragged an arm across his mouth and spat again, glaring as Loki let himself slide to the ground with a thump. He grunted when his bared ass hit the stone, and a moment later he shifted and tugged up on his pants.

Thor rolled onto all fours and stalked toward him.

He wrapped a hand around the sorcerer's neck and shoved him back, trapping his head against the pillar as he grabbed a fistful of Loki's pants and yanked. "Off," he growled hoarsely. "You're repaying me."

Loki blinked, his gaze struggling to focus through a haze of pleasure and exhaustion. Fury had softened Thor's cock, but as he glowered at the half-breed and imagined the feel of him beneath him, worn down and out of fight, pinned and hissing as Thor answered the rough treatment with his own, it stirred again.

Loki shook his head as much as Thor's clutch allowed, and then smirked tiredly.

"Repay you?" he replied. "For what? I gave you a gift, and you returned with a favor." His mouth curled up a fraction more. "The balance between us is even."

Thor squeezed, expecting and ignoring the sharp pain in his knuckles this time. "You won't worm your way out of this, half-breed."

Loki reached for his staff. " _Release me_ ," he ordered, and jabbed the hilt into Thor's stomach.

Thor sank back in a crouch, and watched as Loki sagged against the pillar, gasping heavily.

The match had long burned itself out, leaving the glowing gem in Loki's staff as the only light in the room, when the sorcerer finally dragged himself to his feet. He leaned heavily on his staff for a moment before nodding at the doorway. "You go first."

"You will pay for this," Thor said lowly.

Loki managed another tired smirk. "So many people have told me that," he replied. "My imaginary debts are incalculable."

"I am not people," Thor answered. "I'll make you pay."

"Mm," Loki said, clearly unimpressed. He rolled his shoulders awkwardly before turning to the exit. "I am going to lock a door between us tonight, demon. Choose which side you want to be on."

A growl ripped from his throat as Thor shoved himself to his feet and strode toward the doorway, unwilling to be locked into the storeroom or away from the tunnel leading to the outdoors.

"The hammer," Loki called as he went past. "Take it."

"I refuse your **gift** ," Thor sneered.

"Keep it with you," Loki ordered again. "If I summon you, I'll be in need of defense. I want you well-armed."

Thor snarled in response and stormed through the doorway.

He made his way back to his nest, shoving the door shut behind him and jamming the stone slab up against it. He started to retrieve a second to add to the barrier, and then realized it would just be more weight to move when the sorcerer woke later and forced Thor to let him go.

**If** he woke. Thor shoved a second slab against the door anyway, and then--too agitated to remain still--stalked out of the tunnel and out into his lands.

He discovered no more intruders, and his temper didn't blind him enough that he was willing to waste food mindlessly killing prey he didn't want to eat. So instead Thor raced over his territory until the exercise wore him down enough that he at least resembled calm, even if he remained far from it.

There was no sound from the other side of the door when he at last returned to the tunnel. Thor dropped into his nest and glared at it silently until he finally sunk into sleep.


	3. Unpleasant Enemies

~

Loki sacked the storeroom over the next two days, examining all the items in it, discarding several and packing away the rest. He left soon after, once he was fully recovered; Thor returned from a hunt the sorcerer had compelled him to go on to find the tunnel empty of his presence.

Thor tracked his route and found he'd departed his land entirely. He paced the border, weighing the possibility of catching up to the man and forcing him into the path of the other side's new demon against the risk of having to fight the newcomer and claim the area, now that his former neighbor was gone.

In the end he rejected the idea, and turned away.

Thor wanted Loki to die feeling his claws in his ribs. If some other creature or circumstance ended the sorcerer, he would take the freedom; but he wasn't going to actively help a lesser demon just to gain it.  
  
  
Days passed. Thor stalked his way carefully through the territories that bordered his own, avoiding the new demons who'd come in and broken up and claimed them, until he'd found all he could of the corpses of his former neighbors. He brought them back to his own lands and buried them in the temple's grounds.

Despite the stronger, more potent power that had infused the place since Loki broke the remaining seals, they weren't resurrected.

He was disappointed. But he took an odd pleasure in knowing they would lie undisturbed until the time came he met the demon capable of killing him. Thor continued to catch extra prey and leave it by their graves for several days after he accepted their deaths as permanent, just in case.  
  
  
More days passed. Thor couldn't forget Loki's arrival in his lands or his loss to the sorcerer and its consequences: the scar on his shoulder never faded, and the unlocked power in the temple began to seep out into the rest of the area.

But the sorcerer slowly drifted further back into his memories as he became preoccupied with defending his borders against the newcomers and solidifying his position in their minds. The others finally backed down after he killed a second challenger, and Thor found himself in the midst of a tense truce.

It left him restless. He paced his territory with increasing suspicion and listlessness: he felt nothing resembling security around his new neighbors, and grew steadily more bored without the company of the old ones. Hunting was duller; mating absent.

Thor realized, uneasily, that he missed them.

Demons had no allies; alliances were for humans and the weak, those who had to combine their mediocre strengths to hope to stand against stronger threats. To miss them meant he needed them, which made him lesser.

Or so he'd thought.

As Thor passed by the graves one afternoon to check that no small animals had been digging in the area and that the morning's storm hadn't thrown back the dirt, he wondered if they'd believed the same.

One had shared his nest with the same mate for years and years, from even before Thor met him. Thor had found the idea odd, but shrugged it off and never questioned him about it. The demon was strong, and the three of them had no quarrel with each other; and Thor had never imagined anyone else would be able to kill him. There always would have been time to hear the answer, if he'd ever asked.

So he'd thought.

He returned to the demon's former territory and scouted through it again until he found all the mate's bones. Thor brought them back as well, and buried them in the same grave.

He considered trying to find some of the demon's offspring, to alert them to what had occurred--but as soon as he had the idea, he realized he didn't know where their territories were.  
  
  
Tedium sent him rummaging through the storeroom several times, looking for anything of interest. Most of the items the sorcerer had left behind had too much magic in them to be of any use to him, and the ones that didn't felt broken in some way, by rust or time or neglect. He found a chest that had been unsealed recently enough that a faint tang of magic remained around the lock. Thor finally opened it distrustfully after he'd gone through everything else in the room twice.

It contained armor, most shaped to human measurements and useless. Thor took a pair of leather armbands that matched his own bracers, surprised and interested that they were the right size, and then dug further into the chest that seemed disproportionally deep for its dimensions.

He paused when he uncovered a large belt, tooled with a strap to hold an equally large weapon.

Thor always ignored the hammer lying on its side on the cracked floor when he entered the room. He'd rejected it before, and didn't intend to change his mind-- **especially** if carrying it was what the sorcerer wanted him to do.

And yet, with each day he grew more guarded and more bored. Most of his life had been spent making his way up through the demons' land, and while he'd been surrounded by potential threats before, it was never in territory he intended to permanently keep. Thor was confident he could defeat any of the newcomers individually or in packs, but he also knew there was a point where sheer numbers would turn the odds against him. A demon unaffected by rain could still drown in a flood.

And yet. He'd never needed any weapons beyond his own claws and horns and teeth before, and taking up the hammer felt like accepting the sorcerer's bridle. At the very best, relying on something outside of himself was admitting a need for it, and thus weakness.

Thor stared at the belt for a time longer and then snorted, and reminded himself he'd thought the same thing about his neighbors.

And he supposed learning to wield the hammer would give him something to do.

It did. Thor spent enough time practicing with the weapon that it grew comfortable in his grip, and he soon fell in the habit of carrying it with him. The change moderately enlivened hunting again, and the newcomers drew back further, shying away not only from him but also from the dangerous energy emanating from the weapon.

Thor was unaware of the latter reason for their distance. The hammer liked him.

Weeks passed.  
  
  
He was out on one of the interior mountains, stalking the wildcat he intended to be dinner, when Loki's voice ripped through his head harsh and desperate.

_Thor_ , he ordered, _come to me_.

Thor jerked around, alerting the cat to his presence and sending it fleeing. Loki was nowhere to be seen.

_Thor!_ he demanded. _Come here_.

His scar burned. Thor gripped it as he twisted about and hefted the hammer, still trying to spot Loki's hidden presence even though he remembered this sensation now, the eerie, visceral thud of the sorcerer's voice coming from within his ears.

_**Thor**!_ Loki spat, half frustration and half fear. _Now!_

He doubled over as the burn spread out from his shoulder and magic began to roil though his blood. Thor braced the hammer on the ground and leaned hard against it, gritting his jaw as the rocks shifted beneath him.

The ground altered further, and then ceased to exist.

Then--when he'd only had enough time to instinctually react to that terrible impression, before he could truly process it--it coalesced into something new. Thor jerked his head up, dizzy and shaken, blood racing, and caught sight of a crowd of half-determined shapes that he'd been flung into.

" _Thor_ ," Loki ordered in a thick, far away voice, " _kill them_."

He did.  
  
  
He was finally jarred out of the frenzy when the hammer wrenched awkwardly in his grip, going in the opposite direction he'd swung as if actively fighting him. The rest of Thor's mind caught up with him at the bizarre feeling, and he realized the enemy he was trying to strike was Loki. The smell of blood was overwhelming.

Thor shook himself hard and turned to stare behind him. The narrow canyon was messy with the remnants of bodies, and Thor frowned as he waded back into it, growing more aware of the blood streaking his skin. He'd fought hard battles before and was familiar with the sense of the world narrowing to a single point while all else became a haze--but he'd never known anything like this. He swung the hammer once sharply to knock gore from the head and felt the handle slide in his grasp, slick with blood and sweat.

The enemies he'd killed were a mix of humans and demons. He felt no injuries yet, wasn't sure whether any of the blood on him was his own.

As Thor examined the field and tried to piece back his memories, he began to calm. The pounding of blood in his ears grew less urgent, and soon he picked up another noise beneath it: a soft, liquidy chuckle.

He turned and looked at Loki again.

The sorcerer was slumped against the canyon wall, hands braced over his torso. Most of his clothes were soaked with blood, and a dribble of it ran from his mouth as he laughed. He was watching Thor with wide eyes.

Thor went over and crouched beside him. He dropped the hammer, remembering now the spell the sorcerer had cast to protect himself from it, and tugged Loki's hands from his side to reveal the gaping wound there. The man barely resisted as they were peeled wetly away from the cloth. Underneath the blood, one of his palms was stained a deep gray-blue, the color of Thor's own.

"You're dying," Thor said with satisfaction.

Loki chuckled again, the sound gurgling up through the blood in his throat.

"Not yet," he managed. "Not from this."

Thor snorted. "You're missing a chunk of flesh the size of my fist," he retorted. "Even you can't trick your way out of this."

"They missed the guts." Loki coughed and spat out blood. "I'll heal."

Thor made another disbelieving noise, but then noticed that the wound was slightly smaller than before. He watched it carefully, and saw that bit by bit the flesh was knitting together, a spell at work even with Loki's hands pulled away. He grumbled, disappointed, and dropped the man's wrists.

Loki braced his hands back over his torso. "My camp. Take me back."

Thor's scowl deepened. "You hauled me from my lands with your cursed magic, and now you expect--"

" _Do it_ ," Loki ordered, before shuddering violently and breaking into a harsh cough.

When he got his breath back, he pointed farther up the canyon wall. "There," Loki mumbled. "The cave. Take me."

Thor stared at him for a long while as his scar slowly began to burn with the compulsion. Then he lashed his tail hard against Loki's waist.

The sorcerer's sharp scream was worth the pain that lanced down his spine in response.  
  
  
Thor climbed up the canyon carefully, struggling to maneuver the narrow trail while off-balance from the hammer belted to his side and Loki draped over his back, his staff pressing uncomfortably against Thor's chest. The sorcerer made the climb more difficult at first by digging his nails vengefully into Thor's throat while Thor growled continuously at him; but eventually the man ran out of strength and focused solely on clinging to him and not dropping his staff.

The consequences of the battle were finally coming to Thor. The ache in his strained limbs was growing clearer with the climb, and he'd started to feel bruises where some of the enemies had managed to land hits. A gash along his upper arm stung as he shifted the sorcerer's weight.

When Thor finally reached the recessed opening of the cave, Loki slid off his back and lurched against the rock face. He fumbled for his staff, then rapped it sharply against a jut of stone.

Thor gripped the lip of the cave as the trail cracked and crumbled away on both sides, leaving only the small portion they stood on.

He released the stone and peered down at the canyon below. "Why make a grave if you **aren't** dying?"

"I'll restore it later," Loki replied, staggering inside. "It'll slow any more coming."

Thor shrugged, thinking the climb wouldn't stop too many demons save the sluggish ones, or ones with brittle claws. Behind him, metal clattered harshly on stone.

He turned and found Loki had dropped his staff. The man was struggling to unfasten his tunic; after several moments of futile effort, he finally remembered the torque around his collar.

Loki managed to unlatch it and abandoned it by the staff. He dropped his belt too, wincing at the clang that echoed in the cave, and then flung another object aside with an angry grunt and peeled off the ruined tunic. When it hit the ground he began prising bits of fabric from his wound.

Thor remained by the entrance and watched the sorcerer flinch with each scrap he removed. Loki quickly ceased trying to stand and weaved the few steps to his bedding before sitting down hard. He went back to his task, biting his lip harshly enough that it split.

The cave was dim, but there was enough light for Thor to make out the sickly pallor of his skin, and more than enough closeness to smell just how much blood he'd lost.

"Before you bleed out, send me back," he ordered.

"No," Loki said. " _Stay here_." A violent shudder wracked through him, but he forced out a second order. " _Guard me_."

Thor's tail curled tightly behind him. "For how long?"

"I don't know," Loki answered. He tugged the last tatter of fabric from the wound with a desperately relieved gasp.

"My territory is undefended--"

"I don't care," Loki replied, and collapsed on the bedding.

He fell unconscious almost immediately, half-curled onto his good side. Thor tried to leave the cave, but he barely found two footholds toward the top of the canyon before the spell began tugging him back. It grew to a near-tangible weight on his shoulder after the fourth; and when it dragged him down and almost made him slip on the fifth, he gave up and returned.

He glared at Loki's prone form and seriously considered slashing his throat open where he lay.

He eventually scowled and made himself push the thought aside. Attacking an opponent without warning and when they couldn't respond was beneath him, even if the enemy was as nasty and deceitful as Loki. He was better than the sorcerer.

Thor left him to his sleep and went to examine the cave.

It was wide and shallow, and the man had clearly been camping in it for a few days. The side closest to the cave's mouth was mainly taken up by the bedding, which Thor thought poorly planned--it gave intruders quicker access to the man while he was asleep. In the dimmer recess he found a fire pit, a stack of kindling, a pot of water and several dishes.

He undid Loki's bag and overturned it, dumping out a change of clothes and some personal effects, and peered inside. Despite all the possessions around him and the fact that it was the only sack in the place, its interior looked no larger than its frame. But it stank of magic, and Thor soon dropped it.

He washed the gash in his arm with a cake of soap and a few handfuls of water, and then wiped the suds off and licked it a few times, trying to get rid of the smell. The whole cave reeked to his nose, of cooked meat and blood and magic: magic both normal and, beneath that, twisted, almost charred--the odor of something gone very wrong.

Thor traced the scent and found that the object Loki had tossed away in disgust was the silver brooch the sorcerer had taken from the storeroom, now blackened and warped. Thor poked it with a claw and jerked back at the crackle of malicious energy that leapt from it.

He used the hammer to knock it to the farthest end of the cave.  
  
  
Loki remained asleep for hours, shifting only to hack up bloody saliva occasionally before he ceased doing even that. By dusk, Thor--ravenous from the exertion of the fight, concerned about the lack of water beyond what the pot held--decided to risk falling again and climbed out of the cave to hunt.

To his surprise, the spell let him leave. Thor seized the first thing he was able to catch, a mangy coyote too old to outrun him, and devoured it on the spot. Once partially sated, he looked out over the canyon, trying to determine where this place was and how far Loki had dragged him from his home.

The moment his mind turned to escape, magic flared up along the scar again, almost physically towing him back to the canyon rim and the cave below.

Startled, Thor twisted his head and stared down at the spot. He studied it until the pull became painful, like claws hooked deep into the meat of his shoulder to wrench him forward.

Loki was still unconscious when Thor finally returned. He hadn't moved, and his breathing remained shallow and rasping. The wound had closed further.

Thor considered him silently for a long time.

While there was still a little light left before nightfall, Thor kicked the man's spare clothes into a semi-decent nest before curling up and trying to sleep. He had to bury his head under his arms to muffle the squawking of the carrion birds and the yelping of other scavengers feasting on the corpses below.  
  
  
Loki remained asleep after dawn broke. Thor prodded him in the leg several times, then left to catch breakfast.

Over the course of the day, he tested the bindings of the compulsion. It let him range wide if he were focused on hunting or surveying the land for potential hazards and encroaching enemies; but if his mind turned to going home, it would drag him back to the cave and keep him there for a time no matter what he thought about before it finally relaxed again. Thor checked over and over, but Loki never seemed to have awoken to twist the spell around to trap him. The sorcerer never seemed to have stirred at all--the only thing that changed was his wound, steadily healing and scabbing throughout the day and night.

Thor knew little of magic, but he didn't think it was supposed to be flexible like this. From what he'd heard and seen of spells, they were like objects: solid things, made with ingredients or words, meant to serve a specific purpose. They weren't supposed to be able to **adjust** themselves--at least not without their caster's direct and conscious interference.

Thor thought again of what Loki had said before: that other sorcerers, and their spells, were nothing like him.  
  
  
By the next morning, all that remained of Loki's wound was an ugly, puckered scar. The man flinched and whimpered when Thor poked it, but never fully woke.

Thor was relieved by the signs of stirring. He'd begun to wonder if he would be trapped in this tiny area if Loki never woke again, but never quite died, either.

Prey had fled the location, so he traveled even farther into the scrub brush beyond the canyon. Thor uncovered the coyote pack and caught another one, then found an arroyo with a rivulet still running through it. He followed it until the water widened to a decent stream, and drank his fill before wading in and sloughing off the rest of the dried blood and gore, tired of the way the tacky mess snarled his hair and pulled at his skin.

When the sun began to sink behind the unfamiliar mountain range in the distance, Thor caught and killed two more coyotes, ate one, and dragged the second back with him to the cave. Loki was healed well enough; if the sorcerer remained unconscious tomorrow, Thor intended to consider the order to guard him fulfilled and to set out for his lands, regardless of how difficult it proved. His absence along his borders would be noticed soon, if it hadn't already.

He dropped the coyote over the canyon rim onto the ledge outside the cave, and discovered from the startled noise following its landing that the sorcerer had rejoined the world.

When he returned, he found Loki washing his hands.

"I need more water," the man said. "You drank most of it."

"Send me back," Thor ordered.

"Later," Loki replied. When he growled, the man added, "I need rest. I'll return you in the morning."

"You slept two whole days," Thor said with derision. "How much more rest do you need?"

"More," Loki replied flatly. "Unless you care to risk being bisected on the return." He shook his hands dry. "And it'll be night soon."

Thor gave him a look. "Are you afraid of the dark?"

"More of what it can conceal," Loki answered. "My night vision is not so keen as yours. I need more water."

"Don't you have any hidden?" Thor asked, gesturing at the overturned bag.

Loki gave his rumpled and strewn about possessions an annoyed look before turning back to him. "No," he said. "You're clean; you must have found the river." He pulled the nearly-empty pot closer, and Thor noted he was still favoring his side. "Bring some back."

"You took away the trail," he pointed out. "I can't climb **and** carry that."

Loki made an irritable noise and uncoiled a long leather cord from one of his pack's straps. "Hold in," he murmured tiredly over the pot's rim, before knotting the cord around it.

"There. Tie it on your back," he said, pushing the pot toward Thor.

Thor grumbled but took it and left. He didn't fully trust that the sorcerer would keep his word and send him back the next morning; but at least Loki was awake again. Thor no longer had to worry about being trapped in the cave, spending untold days bound by a spell to guard someone who might never rise from their stupor.

He filled the pot at the river and then turned it upside down, watching with interest as the water sloshed against an invisible seal. Thor shook it a few times, then noticed the thin discolored line running along the inside of the rim. When he sniffed it, the smell of fresh magic seared his nose--but beneath that he caught the scent of the half-breed's blood.

Thor pulled back and eyed the line again, and noted it was yet another mingling of magic and blood. He'd detected the mixture over and over again, in the cave and in his own nest as he scoured away the traces of Loki's presence. It seemed to be the base of all the sorcerer's spellwork.

As dark began to fall in earnest, Thor slung the pot over his shoulder and made his way back to the cave.

Loki had lit a fire in his absence. He'd also packed away his things, and Thor frowned at the loss of his mediocre nest as he dropped the pot by the entrance. "You keep me here for days, and then even take away my bed?"

"I don't want to be lectured on hospitality by a demon," Loki muttered, busy skinning the coyote. "Take one of the blankets."  
  
  
When he was done cleaning the animal, Loki sliced away a long cut of the best meat and dropped it on the bloody pelt. "Here," he said, pushing it toward Thor. "For all your service."

Thor started to reach for the pelt, and then stopped abruptly, eyeing him.

"Is this another ' **gift** '?" he demanded suspiciously.

A smirk flickered over Loki's mouth before he shook his head. "Merely thanks," he replied.

Thor studied him as Loki skewered a hunk of meat on his knife and pushed it into the fire.

There was an undercurrent of weariness in the sorcerer's voice, and the firelight confirmed his fatigue. Though Loki looked far better than anyone with a wound like his had a right to mere days later, he still moved slow as he filled his drinking gourd from the pot. His pallor showed just how much blood he'd lost.

It made the bluish tint on the inside of his hand stand out starkly. The color ran down his fingers and over his palm to his wrist, connecting the old wounds where he'd mixed his blood with Thor's to complete the binding spell.

Thor had noticed over the past two days that unlike the wound in his side, it didn't fade.

When Loki pulled the barely-cooked meat from the fire and blew on it, Thor shifted in his crouch and said, "Liar."

Loki glanced over.

"It's not thanks," Thor continued, watching him closely. "It's repayment, for the summoning." He narrowed his eyes, recalling a phrase Loki had spoken in the storeroom weeks ago. "The balance between us is not yet even, is it?"

The sorcerer considered him in silence for a time, and then quirked the corner of his mouth up faintly.

"Worked it out, did you?" Loki commented. "Impressive. Most who've had no training don't catch the subtleties." He eyed Thor again, expression unreadable this time. "You have good instincts."

Thor didn't answer, and Loki returned to his meal.

Thor studied the sorcerer as he dug ravenously into the meat. Loki had stripped off his cloak after waking and had yet to put on a new tunic, and the firelight revealed more clearly the marks on him that Thor had observed earlier. The damage along Loki's side was no longer so reddened, and it was slowly beginning to resemble the other scars on the man's chest: some old, some newer, but all from small cuts around and over his heart. The tear along his throat from when Thor had attacked his decoy was healed and gone.

His demon markings were almost invisible. If it weren't for his pallor, they wouldn't be evident save in broad daylight. Even then, only the ones along his torso might be apparent--the farther they spread from his navel, the more indistinguishable they became. None were visible on his face or what was revealed of his hands. Thor had to stare hard to see the ones along his shoulders.

Loki devoured nearly half the coyote before forcibly stopping himself and licking the juice from his fingers. He drank several handfuls of water before dragging the rest of the carcass to the coolest part of the cave, and then arched an eyebrow at Thor as he returned to the pot.

"How long are you going to stare?" Loki asked, undoing his boots.

"Why?" Thor replied.

He shrugged. "Curiosity."

"Longer," Thor answered, and Loki rolled his eyes.

Once his boots were off, the sorcerer gathered a change of clothes, a rag, and the soap and dropped them beside the pot before continuing to undress. He set his vambraces with the rest of his ornaments; but he peeled off the tacky, stained cloth of his pants with a revolted noise and flung them beside his ruined tunic. As Loki dunked the rag into the pot and crouched down gingerly to bathe, Thor watched closely to see just how much he continued to favor his side.

He noticed that the man had set the pot between the two of them and tilted further away. Thor huffed in amusement under his breath, then folded his arms and settled against the wall of the cave and continued to examine him.

Once bared, considerably more small cuts were visible on the sorcerer's skin. A streak of them along one arm looked fresher than the rest, as if they'd reopened recently and just healed again. Thor eyed them with a frown as Loki scrubbed and rinsed his legs and pulled on a new pair of pants, and thought once more of the muddled scent of blood and magic.

"What did you do, anyway?" he asked, since despite the scavengers the smell at the bottom of the canyon had started to get repulsive around midday. "It's hard to get demons and humans to work together."

"It's impossible," Loki replied. "A king in the last country I went through developed some objections to me, and gathered his men to help him." He soaped up the rag again and began carefully washing his torso. "I didn't expect them to keep hunting so far from their border."

That explained the humans. "So he was a sorcerer?" Thor asked, remembering old stories of summoners who could seal demons into objects or gems until they wanted them. That would account for how he'd brought so many to the place.

Even as he thought it, Thor realized something was wrong. In those stories, even the most powerful summoners could only trap one or two demons at a time. Not several.

Not--he looked again at the freshly healed cuts on Loki's arm, and the unopened ones around them--dozens.

When he thought back, the only magic he'd smelt in the aftermath of the battle was the kind he'd come to associate with the half-breed.

Loki snorted and moved to washing his chest and arms. "Of course not. Sorcerers live far longer being the power behind the throne, not on it. People always turn against a king who uses magic in the end."

Thor recalled the rumors of all the demons who'd disappeared in the weeks before Loki arrived in his territory. Like everyone else, he'd assumed they'd died; with so many gone, there was no other explanation.

But in every rumor, it had been demons 'disappeared' and nests found 'empty.' No one described finding corpses. No one mentioned bones.

And the sorcerer had so many ornaments: the tassels in his belt and chain; the multiple gems in his staff.

Thor looked at Loki's arm again. "Then where did the demons come from?"

"Fodder," Loki said dismissively. "I needed time to summon you."

Thor narrowed his eyes.

He thought of how Loki had dug up part of the temple to get the bones he needed for his spell without a care for the graves he'd left opened in his wake, or any seeming concern for what it should have meant to his human side. He thought of the decoy that had first trapped him and begun this servitude, that grisly puppet of off-smelling flesh and mixed bones.

Thor remembered again of the smell of ashes on the wind, and wondered if his neighbors had died for similar reasons: to lure him out, to rile him enough that he would be careless and ingest the sorcerer's blood before thinking wiser of it.

That the man had killed them was bad enough. That they might have died for such a petty machination was infuriating.

Thor straightened from the wall, arms dropping to his side. "You think yourself above us, don't you," he said lowly.

Loki eyed him in the side of his vision. "Amusing words, coming from you," he replied. "You feel the same."

"I know myself stronger than most," Thor corrected. "Not above."

"Mm," Loki replied, dunking the rag in the pot.

"Not above demons, perhaps," he said, wiping down the back of his neck and his chest. "But you've made it quite clear you feel a 'half-breed' is beneath you."

"You trapped me, sorcerer," Thor growled, tail curling behind him. "Murdered those around me. Used trickery and deceit to intrude into my land, instead of an open challenge. You bound me with disregard, like some kind of **prize** you'd won."

"And had I done none of those things," Loki interrupted, dabbing his side clean, "then you would **not** despise me?"

Thor studied him. A surprised look had flashed across the man's face as Thor spoke; but he'd folded it up so quickly that Thor couldn't tell--and so didn't trust--what it was in response to.

"I would less," he finally said, because even if all the rest were negated and his neighbors lived again, Loki was still half-human.

The man snorted once more.

"You're an honest thing," he noted. "I'll credit you that."

Thor flexed his hands as Loki went back to his rinsing, trying to find a release for the anger simmering in his chest that wouldn't end in pain from attacking the sorcerer. "I reject the meat," he said tersely. "You can't repay me so cheaply."

Loki blew out a breath through his teeth but didn't look over. "Then think of what you **do** want soon," he replied. "Once I send you back, you'll have no chance to make demands until the next time I need you."

He wrung the rag out. "Do you have further questions? A few more, and I'll count the balance even from that."

Thor made a scornful noise. "I saved your miserable life single-handedly when the rest of your demons fell," he retorted. "You owe more than answering a few unimportant questions."

"So now they're unimportant," Loki replied, arching a brow again. "Your previous ire on behalf of your kind loses conviction. Besides," he continued, "some of the demons were still alive."

Thor stilled.

"Though not for long, after your arrival," Loki remarked, draping the rag over the rim of the pot. He sounded pleased as he added, "The rumors understated your ferocity."

He washed his face in the remaining water and dried it with the damp rag. Thor watched him silently until the man began to wring it out again, and then rumbled, "You won't get away with this forever."

"Not forever, no," Loki agreed. "But I have today and will tomorrow, and likely for many days after that." He tossed the rag back over the rim and smirked at Thor. "You should disabuse yourself of this belief that you'll be the end of me, demon. If you were powerful enough for that, you already would have been."

Thor's tail lashed once, hard, thumping against the wall as it did. Loki glanced at it, mouth shifting as he bit his tongue lightly. Thor growled deep in his throat and watched the man bite down more sharply before returning his gaze to Thor's face.

"You enjoy taunting what you think you control, don't you, **half-breed**?" he hissed.

Loki's smirk widened as he pushed to his feet.

"What's the point of controlling something if you can't take pleasure in it?" he asked, the words poisoned with insinuation and a reminder of the last time Loki had looked down at him, after forcing Thor to his knees.

He rocked to his feet and strode over to the sorcerer, catching him before Loki could step back. Thor braced his fists against the cave wall, pinning the man between his arms, and smiled thinly when Loki shifted back against the stone and glanced over Thor's shoulder to see that both the exit and his staff were blocked to him.

"I think I can find the right repayment for a few of your debts," Thor said lowly. "The rest will come after I'm free."

Loki tilted his chin down to smirk at him. "It took you quite some doing," he scoffed. "I wondered how long you were going to stare."

"Longer," Thor repeated, before jerking once on the waist of Loki's pants. "Strip and get on your knees so I can choke the mockery out of you."

Loki licked his lips, his eyes darker in the firelight. "Slow learner," he murmured.

"We'll see," Thor muttered. Loki made an amused noise under his breath.

He shrugged and reached for the laces of his pants. "I can't see why I need to undress just for you to shove your cock down my throat," he remarked, holding Thor's gaze as he undid them. "Unless you desperately need another glimpse of the sick, flawed creature you're so hungry to fuck."

Loki's grin was wide enough to show teeth as he spoke, and Thor stared at it even as the man looked down and kicked off his pants. Loki pushed them around with his feet until they formed a rough cushion and started to sink to his knees; but Thor stopped him with a hand under his armpit.

Loki glanced back up, raising an eyebrow.

Thor looked him over slowly, and was pleased to see the faint, pinkish marks of healed cuts on Loki's hips where his claws had dug in before. Unlike the wound to his neck, these were apparently so inconsequential that the sorcerer hadn't wasted a spell on them--but it meant Thor had marked him all the same.

He laid a palm over the puckered scar along Loki's side. The man tensed; but the touch was light enough that despite the silent threat, his spell couldn't activate in response.

Thor kept his hand there as he looked back to Loki's face. The sorcerer still had an eyebrow insolently arched, but his smirk had lessened.

"No," Thor decided. "I like your suggestion." He released the man's arm and pushed faintly against his side, urging Loki toward the other end of the cave. "Go to the blankets."

Loki lowered his chin again and tilted his head in false confusion. "And I thought you wanted to choke the mockery from me."

"I will," Thor promised lowly.

Loki's smirk widened even as his fingers twitched. "Forgive me if I have my doubts," he replied, "when you're so indecisive. How far will I get this time before you change your mind **again**?"

Thor caught his shoulder and slung him around to face the wall, sharply enough that Loki barely had time to shove an arm against it as Thor pressed him forward.

He bent down and ran his tongue up the man's spine, licking away a stray droplet of water. The tips of his horns dragged against his skin as he did; Loki shivered and made a low noise, half-muffled against his wrist. Thor leaned heavily on his back, using the extra weight the hammer gave him, and Loki braced his other arm against the stone as well. Thor pinned his forearm.

"You taunt even when you know it's unwise," Thor murmured against Loki's ear. He splayed a hand back over the scar as the man's breath hitched. "How have you managed to stay alive this long?"

Loki chuckled breathily.

"Enjoy your pretense, demon," he replied. "We both know who has the real power here."

Before Thor could growl in response, Loki arched against him with a showy moan.

Thor jolted as the sorcerer shoved his ass forcefully along his cock. When Loki snickered and did it again, Thor grabbed the man's hip before dragging his loincloth out of the way and rutting hard against him.

He stuffed the cloth roughly into his belt and grasped the man's other hip as well, his thumbs digging into the flesh to spread his cheeks so he could rut deeper along his cleft. Loki splayed his hands on the stone and continued to push back, making sharp, pleased sounds as Thor's cock thickened further against him, grunting when the demon's momentum forced him forward and scraped his palms against the rock or chafed the hammer across his leg.

It wasn't enough. Thor kept shifting and readjusting his grip, trying to slide between his thighs and get more friction, more heat, a better clench around his cock. But Loki squirmed away each time, snickering as he twisted just a fraction differently from the direction Thor tried to force him to go, until he was almost ready to shove the insolent half-breed to the ground and fuck him as he was. Thor muttered and dragged his hands to Loki's thighs, and jerked them back sharply with his next thrust.

Loki hissed as his feet slipped. Thor seized the advantage: while the sorcerer steadied himself, Thor ran a hand up his scalp, knocking away his circlet. He gripped a fistful of Loki's hair and pulled his head back, exposing his neck.

Loki's offended curse split into a gasp as Thor worried the skin of his throat where the old tear had been. He pushed Loki harder against the wall and the sorcerer swore again, bracing his arms tautly and shoving back enough that his cock wasn't abraded by the stone. He continued rocking against Thor, his hips stuttering as Thor forced his head to the side and bit the skin beneath his jaw. He was too distracted now to fight, and Thor exhaled heavily as he finally managed to slide his cock between Loki's thighs. But it wasn't enough.

Thor grazed his teeth along Loki's jaw a few more times, listening to his hungry pants, and then pulled back to reach his ear. When he nipped the slight point at the tip of it, the half-breed sucked a breath in through his teeth.

Thor hummed and pressed his mouth to Loki's ear. "Go to the blankets."

Loki laughed, a short, breathy noise, and elbowed him. When Thor stepped back, the sorcerer stumbled for a second before catching himself and turning toward the bedding.

He followed, watching in bemusement as Loki crouched and rummaged through one of the pouches of his bag. Thor dropped to all fours on the bedding and caught his leg, dragging him closer; Loki made an aggravated noise and snatched out a jar as he was pulled.

Thor sniffed when Loki opened it, and caught the scent of oil that lingered on some of the dishes by the fire. He chuckled once and snagged the rim with a finger, tilting it toward himself. "That'll do."

Loki shoved his hand away. "No," he ordered, an edge in his voice. "Not with those claws. I'll do it."

Thor blinked once, and then tilted his head and studied the sorcerer in the dim light. Loki poured some of the cooking oil into the lid and drizzled more over his fingers, then caught sight of Thor's expression as he was pushing the jar aside. His eyes narrowed.

"I can always refuse," Loki said cagily.

Thor considered him for another moment before smiling.

"Go on then," he replied, sitting back on his haunches. "Get yourself slick for me."

Loki eyed him for a few breaths more, then twisted his hand to stop the oil from dripping off his fingers. He gave Thor one last warning look before shifting onto his back.

Thor moved aside briefly as Loki spread his legs, and then resumed his crouch between them while the man rubbed his fingers against his hole. He tilted his chin up in challenge when Loki glanced at him through his lashes.

A moment later, the half-breed made a dismissive noise. Loki looked back to the ceiling of the cave and exhaled steadily as he pushed a finger inside.

Thor hunkered lower as he watched, his tail curling back and forth behind him. Laid flat, the planes of Loki's body were sharper, his skin taut over sinew and the jut of his hips. The length of his stomach dipped slightly between those bones and the edge of his ribs as he arched, shifting on the blankets, and Thor eyed him in appreciation and predation. The half-breed was handsome, healthy, lean and supple, and Thor had already seen proof he was agile. He would be flexible, could be made pliant around him; with less bulk he would run faster at first, but he would also tire sooner than Thor, better suited to short, swift escapes than a long-drawn chase. He had enough muscle that he wouldn't give in or bruise easily under Thor's hands, and would be sufficiently filling that he was worth catching.

Loki pulled a leg up as he worked deeper inside, tilting his hips with the next push. His breath hitched as he did; his eyes had already drifted closed. Thor licked his mouth unconsciously as he reached for his belt.

The hammer thudded heavily against the cave floor when he discarded it. Loki blinked and tilted his head up enough to glance at him, and Thor grinned back as he unfastened his loincloth.

The sorcerer leaned up a little further and looked him over openly, a blatant assessment now instead of the quick, darting considerations Thor had caught him at before. His gaze slid back to Thor's flushed cock and remained there for several breaths; and then Loki dropped his head back to the bedding and closed his eyes again, and pushed a second finger in with a hissed breath.

Thor's grin widened. He braced a hand on the blankets and cupped a palm over Loki's knee, and then wrapped his tail around the man's other ankle before pulling his legs farther apart.

"Ah!" Loki jerked, eyes opening sharply, and bent up to stare at his ankle. Thor curled his tail higher up the man's calf and ran his fingers through the oil in the lid while Loki was distracted.

Loki jolted again and twisted to glare at him, teeth bared, when Thor pressed slippery claws against his hand.

"More," Thor said, cutting off the impending retort. He rubbed the oil along another of Loki's fingers and then pressed it against the other two, leaning down to nuzzle the spot on his neck where the wound had been. Thor nipped it sharply before continuing: "Take in more, little half-breed. You'll need it."

Loki shivered hard against him, hips jerking. Thor smirked and rasped a tongue over his skin before biting again.

Loki shifted under him and laughed shakily. "So you wish," he retorted. "You'll behave however I tell you to."

Thor started to growl in response, but then Loki shifted once more before exhaling sharply.

Thor pulled back enough to see that the man had pushed his third finger in as well, and was slowly working it in beside the others. He smiled, and then cupped his palm around Loki's hand and leaned in, forcing them deeper.

Loki choked and then snarled gutturally at him.

Thor's gaze flicked up to his face. He relaxed his palm and Loki pulled back, teeth bared.

"So there is some demon in you," Thor murmured.

He squeezed Loki's fingers close before pushing harder, sinking them in to the knucklebones.

Loki dug his heels into the bedding with another gagged noise, hips twisting as he tried to shove Thor's hand back. Thor braced his elbow on the blankets and leaned his weight in, unyielding.

Loki thrashed once more and jerked his knee free, kicking him hard in the arm. Thor hit his foot away and caught Loki's leg, shoving upward; but the weight on his elbow put him at an awkward angle. Loki kicked him in the shoulder, then braced his foot there and shoved back, still trying to get loose.

Thor went backward, but he wrapped his arm around Loki's thigh as he did. He pulled it sharply against his chest, yanking on Loki's ankle at the same time and dragging his leg behind him. The half-breed keened when he was jerked onto Thor's thighs, the hand still trapping his own pushing his fingers too hard inside.

Thor shivered at the sound, and tightened his arm and tail. 

A sharp burn was running up his arm, like skin too close to a fire. Loki slammed a heel down hard on his spine and wrenched back against Thor's palm once more.

He let go, and Loki gasped as his fingers jerked out abruptly.

Thor grinned down at him. "No claws."

Loki spat out another curse, panting. "You think you're clever."

Thor splayed a hand over Loki's other thigh, feeling the muscles shift beneath his palm as the sorcerer tried to tug his ankle free. His grin turned to an intent look.

"I think if you disliked it, your spell would have told me," he replied, and Loki's shoulders tensed.

Thor slid his hand up, skirting Loki's still-hard cock to press it against his lower belly, keeping his eyes on the sorcerer's face as he did. "I think you like this more than your arrogance will admit." He rubbed his thumb against the base of Loki's cock, feeling the man's muscles clench under his palm as he drew a small, abortive twitch from his hips. "But your body says it regardless."

Loki sneered, lips too thin, eyes too wide, and shoved at his chest. "Believe what you need to to try and convince yourself you've a way to overpower me."

Thor's grin deepened at the half-garbled retort. He caught Loki's wrist and pulled his hand down, pressing the slippery fingers back against his entrance. Loki kicked him in the spine again.

Thor bit his knee in warning before glancing back at him. "Take more, half-demon," he said huskily. "I'm going to show you what you've missed all the years you spent consorting with humans."

He could feel the tremor that ran through Loki at that, though he tensed to try and hide it. His leg flexed against Thor's chest, hips shifting slightly on his thighs.

"You play yourself up too much," Loki managed a few moments later. "Any further claims, and you're sure to be a disappointment."

Thor nudged a thumb against the back of Loki's hand. "Take in more."

Loki inhaled shallowly, swallowed, and shoved his chest again. "Release me."

Thor did, mostly. He relinquished Loki's leg and thigh, but kept a grasp on his hand, pressing it into the cleft of his ass until Loki jerked hard on his arm and the sharp burn returned to Thor's. He finally let go then.

Loki squirmed back to put more space between them; but he could only go so far with the bedding tucked against the walls of the cave. When his elbow brushed the rock, the sorcerer glared at him in the dimming firelight, not quite hiding another swallow.

The corner of Thor's mouth curved up, and he tapped the back of Loki's wrist.

"Keep your hand away," Loki snapped, reaching for the lid.

Thor chuckled and brushed his tail along the man's calf. Loki swiped his tongue over his lips and then kicked at it with an aggravated noise as he sopped up more oil.

He had to move closer to lie down again, his spread thighs brushing Thor's knees. Thor generously didn't comment; but he didn't refrain from smirking, either. Loki ignored his expression and tugged on the rumpled blankets as he settled himself.

When he pulled his leg back up, Thor rested a palm back over his knee. Loki shifted under the touch, then huffed something rude under his breath and didn't pull away. He rubbed two fingers against his hole briefly and then, after a long breath, pushed back inside.

Thor slid a hand loosely along his heavy, waiting cock and rubbed his thumb absently over the underside of Loki's knee as he watched the half-breed fuck himself open for him.

Loki soon added a third finger, slowing down as he adjusted to the width. Thor smiled again and ran his teeth lightly across his knee before rubbing the saliva into the man's skin. Loki frowned until he was finished.

The man worked back up to his original pace, taking small, sharp breaths through his nose. When he began to palm his cock, Thor moved again.

He settled more comfortably on his knees, pushing Loki's thighs up and apart further as he did. Loki blinked his eyes open to look at him, and Thor curled a hand around the one between the man's legs.

"More," he murmured, smearing the remaining oil onto a fourth finger and pressing it into place.

Loki sucked in another breath before giving him a broken laugh.

"My eyes work, demon," he derided. "You're not that big."

Thor braced a fist on the blankets by Loki's side. He pushed up further as he leaned over, and watched Loki twitch as his finger was forced against his asshole. "More."

Loki panted shallowly for several heartbeats, eyes half closed. Then he exhaled slowly and tilted his hips a fraction, and pushed the finger in.

The half-demon shivered beneath him with the stretch, dragging his legs closer and digging his heels into the blankets. Thor curled his hand around Loki's own and forced it deeper.

Loki arched from the blankets with a curse. He slammed a hand against Thor's shoulder, trying to shove him away. Thor bore into it instead, rubbing his thumb over the inside of his wrist.

"You survived someone trying to rip a hole in your side," Thor reminded him, looking down at the half-demon and tightening his grip. "You can take this."

Loki choked out a laugh, shaky and sharp, and then pressed his head against the blankets as Thor slowly slid his hand back.

Loki shuddered and squirmed beneath him as Thor split him wide on his own fingers, biting his lip and smothering small noises in the back of his throat as he was driven open. Thor kept it up until Loki began to adjust, the tension in his legs easing slightly, his hand loosening on Thor's shoulder for a few moments before he brought it down to his cock.

As Loki wrapped a hand around the head and began to stroke himself once more, Thor pushed hard, forcing his fingers deep as he could make them go. He smirked when Loki's breath hitched and tugged the man's leg out, pressing it down to the blankets. "You look better like this."

"Uncreative," Loki retorted, voice unsteady. "I hope you're better at sex than insults. You've been disappointing with those so far."

"You'll find out," Thor rumbled, and jerked Loki's wrist back.

The man stifled a gasp as his fingers were pulled out brusquely. Thor dropped his arm to the side, and Loki gripped the bedding as Thor tugged him forward.

His head fell back as Thor drew him up his thighs until Loki's ass was wedged firmly against his cock. Thor rocked hard against him once, lifting Loki's hips to drag him along the length of it and making the man groan; and then he pushed him back to position himself.

Loki slapped his arm abruptly, and Thor growled in warning--but he let the sound trail off as the man reached to the side, fumbling for the lid and running his fingers through the last of the oil before grasping Thor's cock.

Thor watched him with hooded eyes, fingers tight on his hips, as Loki rubbed oil over his prick. The man took his time, pressing his thumb along the vein, smirking when Thor's breath shortened each time he squeezed the thick base or pushed too hard against the slit.

Loki's eyes were dark as ran his palm up the underside of the demon's cock once more and then wrapped it around the head. He tugged Thor's foreskin back further before letting his hand glide down, barely touching the length of it as it slid between his fingers.

Thor grunted and caught Loki's wrist. "Enough," he ground out, dragging the man's hand off. "You're going to feel it a different way."

Loki licked his lips as Thor adjusted him roughly. He tilted his hips as Thor pressed the head of his cock against his entrance and then breathed slowly, easing open around him, as Thor pushed inside.

Loki shivered when he stopped partway in. Thor rested his hands on the sorcerer's hips, waiting; and after a few breaths Loki braced his feet against the bedding and rocked forward, pulling his cock in a little further. Thor's fingers tightened reflexively, and Loki chuckled.

He closed his eyes and settled his shoulders against the blankets, relaxing into Thor's grip. Loki ran his tongue over his upper lip once more before jerking his chin.

"Go on," he ordered, rocking forward again.

Thor smiled.

He ran his palms over the jut of Loki's hipbones briefly before sliding them up his thighs. Thor curved his hands as Loki started to give him an impatient look, and then jerked hard, forcing Loki nearly all the way onto his cock.

The sorcerer seized up with a shout and cursed violently. He swung a fist to punch him in the jaw, but Thor caught and pinned it to the blankets instead, leaning forward. Loki gasped.

Thor smirked. "Not like being fucked by a human, is it?"

Loki laughed unevenly. "How would you know?" he huffed. "Unless you've tried it yourself?"

Thor growled low in his throat.

He slung his elbows under Loki's knees and braced his hands on the blanket, shoving in the rest of the way. Loki stifled a sharp noise.

"You taunt, even when you know it's unwise," Thor warned, rolling his hips heavily.

"Nnh." Loki rocked against him slightly before swatting away a length of Thor's hair that had fallen over his face. "Maybe instead of claiming to stop my mockery, you should've promised something you could **do**."

Thor thrust shallowly into him, and Loki hissed out a breath.

He moved slowly at first, because despite the sorcerer's unchecked tongue Thor could feel a low ache crawling up his spine--a burn at the edge of pain, a sensation he remembered from when he'd been young and still sometimes lost fights, before the consequences of that became death only. When Loki wriggled and tried to pull his legs free, Thor shrugged them loose; but he brought his hands back to the bedding immediately and rocked in firmer the next time. The blankets rumpled further in Loki's grip.

Under the easy pace the warning ache steadily dissipated, and Loki soon squirmed beneath him again. A moment later he slung a leg over Thor's back.

Thor exhaled sharply and dragged a hand down to his hip. Loki brought the second one up as well, hooking his ankles against the small of his back, and Thor made a pleased noise as the change let him slide deeper. Loki was panting again, his breath ruffling the strands of hair that kept drifting over his face as Thor moved; he'd shut his eyes to keep them out.

Thor draped his tail heavily over Loki's ankles, trapping them. The man made a low noise and blinked up at him hazily. Thor grinned.

"I don't need to be fucked by a human to know it's not like this," he rumbled, rising up on his knees and dragging Loki higher. The man made a frustrated sound as he moved to brace himself, and Thor lifted his tail enough for him to adjust his legs before draping it back over his ankles and around his calf. Loki moaned openly when Thor's next thrust sunk him in hard and deep.

The blankets rucked up under them, and Loki had to throw an arm behind him and brace it against the cave wall to keep from cracking his head on the rock. He grimaced when the position stretched the skin around his scar, and Thor narrowed his eyes--but the sorcerer only hissed softly through his teeth, and said nothing.

Thor chuffed under his breath and slid a hand behind Loki's back, giving the man better support to ease the pull along the freshly healed wound.

Loki blinked his eyes open again to look at him askance. But after a hesitation he relaxed along Thor's arm. He groaned warmly when Thor supported his weight at the next push, rolling his head to the side.

Thor watched Loki's shoulders go taut as he strained against him, trying to press back enough that Thor didn't force him into the wall, and put more strength into his thrusts to keep seeing it. Loki writhed below him, clutching frantically at the stone for several moments before he finally managed to steady himself enough to work a hand over to his cock. Thor chuckled breathily when he noticed.

"You must have been starving among them," he grinned. Thor snatched his wrist, dragging it away and pinning it to the bedding. Loki cursed.

"Let go!" he hissed, wrenching his arm; but Thor leaned more of his weight onto it, and Loki went nowhere.

"It'd be hard to keep this up," he replied, bringing his other hand back to Loki's hip before thrusting in hard again, "if I can't brace myself."

Loki heaved against his grasp. "Touch me!"

Thor's grin widened. "You told me to keep my hand away."

Loki made an infuriated noise and jerked his arm from the wall. Thor pulled back and plunged in hard, forcing Loki to scramble to brace himself against the stone again as the blankets rode up further.

Thor made a low, pleased noise as the half-demon yowled at him, the sound torn from his throat. Loki tried to yank his hand free once more to no avail, cursed, and then snapped " _Thor_ \--"

He cut off with a cry as Thor slammed into him, jerking Loki's hips up to meet him as he did.

Loki tried again to compel him, and again failed as the words stuttered under another rough thrust. Thor drove into him relentlessly, a thrill running up his spine as he realized there **was** a way around the sorcerer's binding: for all that Loki claimed it was unbreakable, it was useless if he lacked his voice.

Thor growled thickly as he moved, heady and gratified with the discovery, and a shudder wracked through Loki before he snarled back. The half-demon hissed and spat and thrashed against him, trying to break the hold on his ankles and wrist and hip, and Thor found himself laughing, warmth curling in his stomach. Loki clawed as much of the hand pinning him as he could reach and tried again: " _Thor!_ "

Thor leaned down closer to his ear, and Loki gasped as the new angle bent him further.

"Do you really want to do that, little half-demon?" he rumbled, wrapping his tail tighter around Loki's calf as he tried again to pull loose. Thor glanced at the way Loki's arm trembled where it was forced hard against the wall. "Do you have so much strength to spare?"

Loki's fingers curled against the stone when Thor bit the tip of his ear. The half-demon shivered and groaned harshly when Thor tugged it roughly between his teeth.

"I'll leave you exhausted under me by the end," he promised. "Be certain of it. You don't have to help."

Loki hissed feebly as he slumped against the bedding. Thor rocked into him, shallower this time, and Loki's eyes flickered closed. Thor smiled and did it again, watching the way Loki's chest rose and fell sharply as he panted, the way each thrust jostled his cock against his stomach, drops of precome dribbling onto his flesh. He remembered the strained skin around Loki's scar and slid an arm beneath his back.

" _Let go_ ," Loki rasped.

Thor made a harsh, angry noise and dug his claws in. If Loki flinched, it was impossible to tell under the way he quaked as the compulsion took its toll.

Thor flung away Loki's hand and gripped his hips instead, digging his claws and the balls of his feet into the bedding. " **Sorcerer**."

Loki gagged at the rough thrust that followed, and then laughed at him and managed to keep laughing through the next few.

But he soon cut off with a whine and fisted a hand around his cock. Loki gasped as he began to jerk himself off, sliding into the same harsh pace Thor took him with.

Thor was tempted to slow down, or to pull out and fuck that arrogant mouth instead. But all Loki was using it for now was to groan greedily with each stroke and thrust--and Thor had been holding back for too long, half-wanting to see him come first, to feel the man finally yielding, brought to heel, beneath him.

So he kept the pace, and watched Loki's shoulders grow tenser as he forced them against the bedding. Thor had drawn his tail away, but the man's legs were still hooked behind him, and the muscles in his thighs flexed against Thor's waist as Loki pushed into his thrusts.

It wasn't long before he started to fall out of the rhythm. Thor's eyes hooded as Loki grit his jaw suddenly, his groans turning to sharp breaths sucked through his teeth as he pressed his head to the blankets with the next thrust. Thor ran his gaze over his bared throat and didn't realize the ravenous noise he was making until Loki whined agitatedly, his eyes fluttering open just enough to glance at Thor before he came.

A long shudder ran up Thor's back.

He dropped to his forearms and Loki cried out as he was bowed sharply again. Thor drove into him relentlessly, wanting only to be sunk deep inside as Loki clenched around his cock, still shivering from his orgasm. Loki's legs loosened and started to drop to the blankets, but Thor caught one and dragged it back up.

Loki punched him in the arm. Thor tightened his grip and thrust viciously, shoving him upward hard enough that Loki's forearm was trapped between his head and the wall, the blankets crumpled around him. Loki made a high, furious noise that left Thor shivering, and he knew it would be soon--it had been too long since he'd last had a companion for sex, and Loki was trembling and snarling brokenly beneath him, heart pounding and breath wheezing each time Thor drove into him. It would be soon; he just had to keep the half-demon pinned and compliant a little longer.

Loki reached up and fumbled his free hand into Thor's hair before catching hold of a horn. He yanked it sharply.

Thor growled and grabbed the back of his knee, slamming his leg up. Loki kicked poorly at his ribs and wrenched again, throwing his weight into it, and Thor shook his head hard, scraping a horn across Loki's arm and face as he tried to get free. Loki shouted and tightened his grip, then heaved himself up and slammed his forehead into the bridge of Thor's nose.

Thor jerked his head back and shook it hard to clear it, his growl turning guttural. He gripped Loki's scar and squeezed.

Loki screamed. A vicious spike of pain lanced down Thor's spine in response--but he barely noticed, because a second later the half-demon sank his teeth into his arm and clawed open his back.

Thor shoved Loki's leg to the side and grabbed a fistful of his hair, hauling him away. The half-demon had drawn blood: it was smeared across his thinned lips as he tried to surge forward and bite more. Thor slammed the hand down on the bedding, pinning his head to the blankets. Loki tore his nails over his back again.

Thor crushed his mouth against Loki's and drove into him one last time, biting his lip open as he came. The half-demon shouted, jerking beneath him, and Thor sank his teeth in deeper as he shuddered through his release.

Loki was still quaking, gasping harshly against his mouth as he struggled for air under his weight, when Thor finally shivered one last time and then shook himself.

He pressed a thumb to his nose and determined it wasn't broken, then ran his tongue over the split in Loki's lip. When he flinched and turned his head away, Thor huffed.

He caught the tip of Loki's ear between his teeth instead, worrying it more gently this time, and the half-demon groaned quietly. He trailed off with a shiver as Thor mouthed the pulse behind his ear with a pleased grunt and then dragged his tongue along Loki's throat, lapping away the sweat.

Thor bit lightly at the base, making Loki swallow, before pushing up and looking him over. Loki's head was lolled against the blankets, his eyes closed, and even in the dying firelight Thor could see the flush spread along his face and neck. He still hadn't caught his breath, still couldn't use that insolent tongue for anything more than to pant desperately and to whine low in the back of his throat when Thor pulled out.

Thor chuckled in contentment, then shifted down to examine Loki's side.

The scar had opened partly where he'd squeezed, blood oozing from the split skin and smeared where his weight had borne down on it. Thor rubbed it off himself briefly with the heel of his palm before bending down and starting to lick it away from the wound.

Loki's breath hitched as Thor's tongue rasped over his skin. He started struggling a moment later, trying to pull free, until Thor splayed his hands over his stomach and hip and pressed him down.

"Be still," he ordered, lifting his head briefly to frown at him. "You'll open it further."

Loki stared at him for a long moment, and then slumped against the blankets. He dragged a hand across his face, pushing his hair back, and shivered lightly as Thor resumed.

Once Loki's skin was clean, Thor was glad to see that the blood was only dribbling sluggishly from the opened bits of the scar--it would reseal soon. Loki flinched sharply with a hiss when Thor licked one of the spots, and then pushed a hand against his shoulder.

"Stop," he said hoarsely. "I have spells for that."

Thor snorted lightly, but pulled back. Loki's breath was still rasping, and as Thor bit soothingly at his throat and jaw he considered how the half-demon would look in his nest: naked on his belly among the pelts, sprawled out sated and winded like this, recovering from one mating and almost ready for the next. He would make that same low whine from before when Thor fisted a hand in his hair and dragged him back to his knees, when Loki was tugged hard to his chest and felt Thor's cock thick and ready against him once more.

Then he shook his head sharply and pushed the image away. He would never willingly let the sorcerer back that deep into his territory.

Loki shifted under him with a faint noise, and Thor looked down just as the man ran a finger over his upper lip.

Thor blinked once before giving him a bemused look. Loki's expression was distant as he brought his finger down, catching his bottom lip and tugging it lower; and Thor realized the other side of the blood in his mouth.

He reared back and spat it to the side, scowling.

Loki let his arm fall. "When you take me apart piece by piece, demon," he said with a tiny, lethargic smirk, "you're going to have a difficult time licking the blood away if you spit it out immediately afterward."

Thor made a low noise in his throat and looked down at him, noticing more clearly the red smeared on Loki's lips and teeth. The ache in his arm reminded him that the blood wasn't all the sorcerer's own, and the marks down his back stung enough that he knew the man had drawn it there too. Thor flexed his fingers before knotting them back in Loki's hair. "I'm glad you remember that promise."

"It was such a poorly conceived threat, it would be difficult to forget." The sorcerer rolled his neck as much as he could, and then stretched carefully a moment later.

Thor's eyes narrowed. "Your silence didn't last as long as I'd hoped."

"There are consequences to overestimating yourself," Loki agreed.

"Maybe after a second time it will take," Thor grunted, edging the man's leg wider with his knee. Loki twitched and hissed.

Then he smirked and set his palm against Thor's forehead. The blue tinge was gone.

"You've been paid, demon," he replied, pushing calmly. "And I need rest."

"Disappointing lack of stamina, half-breed," Thor answered, pressing back this time and forcing the man's arm to tense as he slid his claws up Loki's thigh.

"Some of us devote our stamina to other things than rutting," he retorted. Thor snorted and dipped his thumb along the inner joint of Loki's leg, watching him struggle to keep his smirk in place.

Loki jerked when Thor slid his thumb into the cleft of his ass, and shoved harder. "I said no."

Thor shook his head sharply, knocking the hand away. He pressed the pad of his thumb against the man's hole, pushing down and feeling the muscles quiver. Loki sucked in a breath through his teeth.

Thor kept his eyes fixed on Loki's as he rubbed a dribble of come over the rim. "Next time then."

" **No** ," he repeated, yanking on Thor's wrist, trying to get his hair loose.

Thor pressed down again briefly before sliding his thumb up, letting the edge of his claw graze the skin as it went past. "Yes."

Loki shivered.

Thor watched his eyes flutter closed, and thought again how it might go if he let Loki into his nest.

Now that he knew Loki could fight properly, not just with deception and nasty magic, Thor wouldn't mind a real spar. The half-breed had no horns, no claws, blunted teeth--yet he lashed out as fiercely as if he did, as if somehow his flawed build were still equal. Thor liked the idea of seeing just how ferocious Loki could get.

But he knew he would still win in the end, if there was no trickery.

He would win, and then he would keep Loki pinned with a heavy hand between his shoulder blades, seething and worn out and defeated, the sounds he'd make muffled into the pelt he bit down on as Thor spread him back open.

It would be after he'd already taken Loki upon winning, so he'd have the patience to go slowly. And he **would** do it slowly, listening to Loki's breath catch with each little tug, feeling him flinch at every tiny scrape of his claws. He would work him open until Loki was loose and slick and shaking, until his anger had burned away and he was so hard it ached. Thor would keep him like that until the presumptuous little half-demon finally ceded, whined and slumped beneath his palm and pleaded desperately to come, to be given leniency.

He would undoubtedly snarl when Thor took the nape of his neck in his teeth, enraged to be taunted after surrendering at last. Thor might cease teasing then, so he could listen to Loki hiss and pant in broken gratitude as he withdrew his fingers without hurting him, right before he yowled as Thor shoved his cock in their place.

He ran his tongue along his teeth and caught Loki's gaze.

"Next time," Thor promised, sliding his hand up to cup the man's thigh. Loki swallowed thickly and didn't take his eyes from his face.

They stared at each other for several heartbeats until Loki's gaze narrowed and he yanked Thor's wrist again. When Thor let go of his hair, he propped himself up on an elbow and pushed an arm against his chest. "Move."

Thor rolled aside, eventually, and settled on the blankets as Loki rose gingerly to his feet.

He wiped the lid off on a non-bloodied patch of his discarded clothes before washing and shaking it dry. Loki cleaned himself up as well, murmuring something in a fatigued voice as he soaped down his side around the scar. He screwed the lid back on and returned the jar to his pack before banking the fire. Thor watched him, a satisfied smile on his face at the careful, stilted way Loki moved.

The sorcerer paused when he returned to the bedding, frowning down at him with irritation. "You look too pleased with yourself."

Thor cupped a hand around his calf. "Cease the cutting remarks for once," he replied, tugging. "Lie down."

"Move over," Loki responded.

Thor made a face and tugged again, sharper. "You took away my bed," he reminded. "Lie down."

Loki shoved his shin with a foot. Thor didn't bother to growl in response, because the brief grimace that twisted the man's mouth was the sign of a better warning. "I told you to take a blanket," Loki ordered. "You take up my whole bed. Get out."

Thor did growl this time. He rolled to the side a moment later, seizing the two bottom blankets and leaving Loki with only the top, filthy one.

The sorcerer made another aggravated noise.

But he didn't argue or fight when Thor gave him a challenging look, even though Thor saw the urge to flash across his face. Instead he sighed exaggeratedly and flipped it over. Thor rumpled his blankets into a tolerable nest and curled up on them, observing Loki as he smoothed out the bedding and eased down onto it.

The man fell asleep shortly. Thor snickered to himself again about his stamina as he licked at the teeth marks in his arm.

When the blood was gone and the bite stung less, Thor settled further into the nest and coiled his tail closer. He watched the rise and fall of the sorcerer's chest for a time before finally drifting to sleep himself.  
  
  
Loki cooked the remains of the coyote for breakfast, except for the portion Thor managed to save from the fire. Neither spoke beyond Thor's grumbling about the man's taste; Loki only rolled his eyes in response.

Thor watched with interest, leaning out of the opening of the cave, as Loki steadily called the rocks he'd sent crumbling to the bottom of the canyon back up and reformed the trail. The sorcerer remained on the ledge afterward, hands folded around his staff and a slight frown on his face, until Thor grew restless and pushed away from the entrance.

"Send me back," he ordered. "I have damage you caused to fix."

"Yes, yes," Loki replied, voice still distracted.

Thor muttered and swung to the side, thinking of the stream once more. If the sorcerer was going to be sly and deceitful yet again, he might as well rinse himself off better before coming back and forcing Loki to keep his word. He started up the trail.

" _ **No**!_ " Loki shouted, lashing out with his staff. He caught Thor in the chest and shoved him backward.

Thor stumbled against the edge of the cave and bared his teeth, ready to snarl and lunge; but he stilled, the sound lodged in his throat, as the edge of the sorcerer's staff began to crumple. Loki released it and the staff jerked from his hands, folding and twisting in on itself. Thor winced and tilted back as the metal screeched and the gems shattered under the invisible pressure. Beside him Loki swore violently.

A moment later the misshapen ball that had previously been the staff dropped to the ground with a thud, in the spot Thor had been about to step.

Loki's curses trailed off until they finally ended on a weary "Damn." He exhaled through his teeth, staring at the lump.

Thor growled low. "Why didn't you **warn me** \--"

"I knew something was wrong," Loki snapped. "I hadn't yet figured out what. **Stay still**."

Thor growled again, but did so, fighting the urge to lash his tail.

"Don't move," Loki repeated, and pulled a knife from his boot.

He sat down cautiously, then loosened his tunic and sliced the blade along the skin over his heart. Loki set the knife on his thigh before pinching the cut, oozing more blood onto his fingers.

Thor watched guardedly as the sorcerer pressed one hand to the rocky ledge and laid another palm up on his knee. He lifted his chin, scenting the air as Loki began murmuring in another language, and just barely caught the tang of magic in it.

The smell grew steadily clearer as Loki chanted, until it became overpowering. Thor wrinkled his nose and pressed the back of his hand against it, breathing shallowly through his mouth as the magic seared his throat.

Loki's voice had gone hoarse when the spell finally, at last, began to diffuse. Thor sighed in relief as the magic slowly evaporated and fresh air returned.

When it was gone, Loki slumped forward. The movement knocked the knife from his leg; he fumbled for it, but didn't manage to grasp it before it tumbled over the ledge.

Loki exhaled through his teeth again, much wearier this time, and braced his head up with a hand.

A few moments later, he slapped his palm against the rock.

"You should be grateful to me," he muttered. "You don't know what I just saved you from becoming."

"A victim of your own treacherous life?" Thor suggested unpleasantly, still rubbing his nose.

"I wasn't speaking to you," the man replied, and pushed to his feet.

"Let's go," he ordered, refastening his tunic as he turned to the upward trail. "The way's clear now."

Thor grabbed a fistful of his cloak. "Send me back," he growled.

Loki gave him a disdainful look over his shoulder. "I can't," he retorted. "That exhaustion you were so pleased to take advantage of last night remains. This used up the energy I had to return you, and I can't afford the drain if I send you back only to find I need you again in a few hours." Loki latched his torque and readjusted his cowl, and then yanked on his cloak.

Thor tightened his grip. "You promised."

Loki's lips thinned. "And unlike others I keep my oaths," he replied viciously. "I said I would send you back in the morning, I didn't say which one."

"My territory is undefended!"

"Then kill the interlopers when you return and reclaim it," the sorcerer snapped. "You did it once before, didn't you?"

Loki wrenched hard on the cloak, tearing the fabric around Thor's claws. " **Come** , demon. If he found me again there's little time."

Thor studied him skeptically.

But despite the sorcerer's aggravated expression, there was an edge of apprehension in his voice. And his heart was pounding faster--too fast to be just a consequence of the spell. Thor made a frustrated noise and released his cape.

He jerked his head toward the canyon floor, where the reek of the corpses still lingered. "They're all dead," he said bluntly. "Unless your king can rise from the grave, this was just a spell you missed."

Loki's laugh was abrupt and wild, and it made Thor narrow his eyes and set his feet unconsciously.

Its pitch recalled something that had gone rabid: something that would fight to the death without recognition of how overwhelmed or damaged it was. The danger it signaled set Thor's teeth on edge.

He'd thought the sorcerer mad before. He'd underestimated it.

"' **My king** ,'" Loki snarled--and then he stilled, and shook his head hard.

A breath later he turned sharply toward the trail.

"No," Loki continued, voice calm again. "This wasn't that petty human." He braced a hand against the canyon wall and started making his way upwards. "Move, demon."

Thor hissed out a long, long breath through his teeth, tail lashing violently behind him.

But he thought over the trepidation in the sorcerer's voice, and glanced again at the deformed lump of metal that had been his staff; and, at last, he began to follow.


	4. Tolerable Travels

~

The sorcerer hadn't lied about his exhaustion.

Loki made it up the path without falling, walking with one hand pressed tight against the cliff face. But once they were out of the canyon and nothing remained to lean on, he staggered and weaved his way into the scrub brush.

Thor followed, watching with a mixture of aggravation and borderline mercy. He kept his strides short and his pace slow, but made increasingly displeased noises as the sorcerer's lagging tread grew more frustrating. 

Loki finally stopped beside the split trunk of an old, gnarled tree. A lightning strike had shattered it, leaving half the branches toppled onto the ground, attached to the trunk by only the thinnest strips of bark.

"Enough," he demanded. "Stop your yowling for a minute and let me concentrate."

"You are **slow** ," Thor grumbled, striding around the tree to examine the area, glad to be moving at a decent speed again.

Loki muttered something rude and ordered, "Be quiet."

Thor left him leaning heavily against the trunk with his eyes shut. They hadn't gone far--he could still see the edge of the canyon rim if he squinted. He heard no signs of life save a few birds in the distance; more ominously, he couldn't discern the sound of water.

Nor did he hear or smell or see any trace of someone tracking them.

Thor crouched and thumped his tail on the ground, weighing Loki's seemingly sincere fear of whoever was after him against the danger of traveling too deep into an unknown area without water.

It was an unfamiliar concern. His territory had a river and streams and sudden storms, along with plentiful nooks and dips in the surface to catch the rainfall. Even before he'd claimed and mapped the land, back when he was still roaming, rain had always seemed to come when he'd gone too far from a known source. One of his few memories of his mother was her laughing on the bank of a previously dry riverbed now roiling in the aftermath of a torrential storm, as she kissed his brow and told him he had been well born.

Thor frowned slightly at the recollection.

He hadn't thought of her in a long, long time--she had lost a brawl when he was young. He'd survived throwing himself at her killer only because he'd been too small yet for the demon to consider him worth fighting; she'd flung him into a ravine instead.

Thor shook the thought aside and tilted his head, listening harder for any hint of water.

He was about to tell the sorcerer they should follow the arroyo when Loki called, "Come here."

Thor looked over. Loki had straightened away from the trunk and now rested a hand on the broken limb. He gestured to Thor.

"Why?" he replied, suspicious.

"I'm going to take a shortcut," the man answered. "If you don't follow close you'll be lost."

Thor eyed the trunk, and then the vast stretch of landscape around them, before looking back to Loki. "Is this more magic?"

"How perceptive of you," he drawled. "Come on. I've wasted too much time already."

Thor snorted in agreement and went over.

Loki hooked his fingers through Thor's belt. "Hold fast," he said before ducking under the branch, tugging Thor after him. Thor swatted irritably at his hand and stooped beneath as well, and walked into oblivion.

Stepping through the trunk's arch had flung him into the night sky, as vast and endless as when viewed from the highest peak in his territory. There was no ground beneath him--only the void, spreading out as deep below as it did above.

It left Thor with the same gut-wrenching panic as when he'd been summoned, only this time it didn't end. He clawed out for something solid and seized Loki's arm, growling in furious horror.

"Thor," the sorcerer said calmly. "Don't look around. Just follow me."

Thor's grip tightened as he started to move. Loki tugged on his belt.

"Come along," he murmured. "It's eighteen steps and then we're out."

It was eighteen steps of nauseating, abysmal effort, slogging through an emptiness thicker than the worst mud. It sucked at his feet and body and hammer stronger than quicksand. Thor struggled through it, counting each step, gripping tight to Loki's arm and cape and staring hard at the pale green fabric to block out the inky, starry space in the edges of his vision. Loki made coaxing sounds as he walked, but if they formed words Thor couldn't hear them over the blood rushing through his ears. He clenched his jaw, and forced down the panic that tried over and over to rise in his chest, and kept counting.

At the seventeenth step there was a chittering to the side. Loki cursed.

"Go!" he hissed, throwing something. "Scat!"

Thor looked over.

A squirrel was darting away from them, scolding angrily as it ran toward a giant tree standing amid the void, its roots sunk in darkness and its branches rising to darkness also.

Thor staggered, staring at the incomprehensible size of the thing. A shudder run down his spine as he realized the emptiness around them was even vaster than he'd thought, if it could contain that tree and still spread out so far and wide past it.

"What **is** this?!" he hissed.

"Don't look," Loki repeated, jerking on his belt. "Go forward. We're here."

He yanked sharply again, and Thor stumbled through the eighteenth step and out into the recognizable world.

He tumbled to the ground, thrown by the lack of resistance in the air. Thor rolled to all fours and swung around, growling with teeth bared. Loki staggered to the side and slumped hard against another lightning-struck tree, bracing his palms on his thighs.

"Damn that squirrel," he panted.

Thor's growl deepened as he slowly paced the tree, not taking his eyes from it. Loki sank to the ground and leaned against the trunk, getting his breath back. He glanced at Thor in the side of his vision as he moved past.

"Calm yourself, demon," he said. "We're out."

"For now," Thor said gutturally. "Until it opens again."

Loki rolled his eyes. "For permanent," he replied. "Until I need through again."

"How do you know?" he snarled.

"Those paths don't **want** to be used," Loki told him. "They have to be...." He hesitated for a moment, then made a vague gesture. "Peeled open, to get to."

Thor ignored him and circled the tree a second time as Loki sighed dramatically.

It was similar to the one they'd gone under--lightning-split, branches broken but still connected, forming an arch--and when he sniffed the air he caught the faintest trace of the half-breed's blood buried under the rot and the strange, itchy scent of greenery and the insects inside the wood.

He came in a little closer the third time he paced it. Thor noticed a dark smear across the underside of the arch, but found no sign of a tear that the void could spill through.

He remained motionless and waiting. Loki left him to it, resting his head against the trunk with his eyes closed.

The man's sapped, unwinding state was what finally convinced Thor the threat had passed. If there was anything beyond the archway escaping his own smell and sight, the sorcerer would feel it. Loki might not be as concerned, but given how long it took his heartbeat to calm after they'd gotten out, forcing his way through that emptiness was no enjoyable task for him either.

Thor slowly eased out of his crouch. He glanced sharply at the trees around them, at last remembering to check for other threats, and then glared at the sorcerer. "What **was** that?" 

"A shortcut," Loki replied.

Thor growled again at the flippant answer. Loki ignored it.

Thor hissed a breath through his teeth, and finally jerked his jaw at the streak of blood on the archway.

"If you're trying to flee, you're doing a poor job of it," he said. "You mark out all your magic with blood. Your enemy will find your shortcut easily."

"Let him find it, it'll do him no good," Loki replied, waving a hand. "Ratatosk will tell Vedfolnir, and the news will reach his pets, and it will still do him no good. He'll have to take the normal roads to track me here, and by the time he reaches it I'll be gone. Only I can travel those paths," he said with a small smile.

Thor gave him a skeptical look. "I made it through."

Loki's smile widened at that for the briefest of moments; and then he popped his neck and forced himself to his feet.

"Come, demon," he said, pushing away from the trunk with a forearm. "There's a ways still to go."

Thor eyed him.

But when Loki began to walk forward, he eventually followed before the man moved out of hearing, keenly aware that he had no better options and resentful for it.

Loki made his way through the tangled, matted mess of grass and plants growing between the surrounding trees, following no path Thor could discern. The plants stung and scraped his feet and legs, and left thorns in his palms when he shoved them aside. Loki rolled up his cloak and slung it over his shoulder.

The plants didn't thin out as they walked, and neither did the trees. Thor looked around between picking out the safest places to set his feet, rubbing his nose at the overpowering smell of greenery and rot and dozens more scents he didn't know. He never saw a place where the trees finally ceased.

He'd heard about forests before, in stories passed along from other demons who'd been captured for a while by magicians. He decided this had to be one.

The relentless reminder of just how far he'd been wrenched from his lands made him growl low in his throat.

"Now what are you grudging?" Loki said, pushing aside a thorny vine with his armguard.

" **You** ," Thor ground out. "This **magic**. That cheating shortcut of yours." He swatted at a tangle of brambles that clung to his loincloth, frustrated by the unfamiliar place, by his previous panic in front of the half-breed, by the knowledge that his home would soon be taken for abandoned, his neighbors' graves no longer guarded.

"How is it cheating?" Loki replied, irritable. "I **found** them. I learned the way through them. My use of them's as fair as anything."

Thor scowled reflexively, in disbelief at his logic and unease at the news that there were more openings to that emptiness in the world.

Then, as he stopped to prise his loincloth loose from another group of thorns, he considered the words.

Thor thought of the tree standing in the void, and felt his heart beat faster just remembering. It had been a long time since he'd felt dread like that--almost longer than he could recall, not since those early, over-brash fights when he'd been a whelp. But he would rather take on those fights again, and lose again, and endure the consequences and the stark realization that he could die under another's claws again, rather than step into that abyss a second time. Those were things he understood; that darkness was unfathomable.

And he had had a guide.

He watched Loki pick his way slowly through the undergrowth. His walk was sluggish and his shoulders rounded; the exhaustion he was sunk in was palpable. If he'd been prey, Thor would have passed him over in case the unconcealed weakness was a sign of disease.

He was fatigued himself, his muscles worn and aching. The constant catch and scrape of the brambles was aggravating, but that had nothing on the strain sunk into his marrow. It was worst in his legs, where he'd struggled through the unyielding mire of the void.

Magic was a rarity among demons, but it wasn't unprecedented. Thor had to acknowledge that if Loki had forced his way into that unnatural realm and then managed to escape, it was a victory, even if against an abnormal opponent.

That he'd returned to it, and often enough that he'd mapped it, was further proof he was mad. But the fact that he'd managed to survive doing so was a sign he was formidable.

If Thor refused to respect that, he ran the risk of underestimating the sorcerer again.

"Fine," he said grudgingly.

"What?" the sorcerer replied, tone still annoyed.

"Fine," Thor agreed. "It isn't cheating."

Loki paused, and glanced over his shoulder. The shadows of the spreading branches and his cowl hid much of his expression, but Thor heard the man huff quietly before resuming his pace.

A few wordless minutes passed, and then Loki exhaled and pushed aside a clump of thorny vines.

"Here's the path," he said, stepping onto a narrow but passable track of grass.  
  
  
It wasn't long before Loki's efforts to walk became little more than graceless staggering. Thor dropped behind and let him push on for a long while, watching how he forced each foot forward and listening to his breathing grow wearier, taking note of how much the half-breed could endure. The sorcerer twitched his fingers often, as if trying to brace himself with a staff that wasn't there.

Eventually the silent observation began to sit poorly with him, even if the sorcerer didn't deserve any sort of mercy. Thor caught up beside him and said, "You're going to collapse."

"Not yet," Loki puffed. "I can manage a little further."

Thor made a disparaging noise and grabbed him by the shoulder. "Enough. Where's a place to rest?"

Loki glowered and shoved his wrist. "Nowhere."

Thor exhaled through his teeth and turned to the side, hauling the sorcerer back into the tangle of clinging plantlife. "Fine," he retorted. "Then here'll do as well as anywhere."

Loki slapped and then clawed at his hand. Thor growled low and jerked him forward sharply; when the man stumbled ahead of him, Thor released his shoulder and gripped the back of his neck instead. He forced Loki toward a spread of nearby trees.

The half-breed snarled when Thor shoved him down beside a trunk without any brambles around it, glaring up at him with his lips pulled back from his teeth.

"Rest," Thor ordered, looking for another spot free of thorns. "You're the one that knows this place. I won't end up lost in it because you can't tell when to halt."

Loki kept glaring, looking as though he would get back up from spite. Thor braced against the spongy ground, ready to spring and pin him down.

But rising to his feet apparently demanded more energy than the sorcerer had left. He slouched against the trunk a few moments later, and then slung off his pack and slumped deeper, closing his eyes.

"I was tired anyway," he muttered. Thor resisted the urge to smack him with his tail.  
  
  
He eventually left Loki there after the man fell asleep.

He was still tired, but he couldn't rest in a place he didn't know. Thor examined the forest around them, leery of a land that wasn't made of rocks and mountains and dry grass. The few short and scrubby trees within his territory had left him unprepared for the mossy and plant-growing trunks of the ones here.

He expanded his scrutiny in tight spirals, and took his time hunting down and associating new smells with new items. He backtracked often to the spot where the sorcerer had passed out to make sure he could still find it.

The day was half gone when he began to hear a chopping sound among the trees. Thor growled under his breath and fell back to the place where Loki slept, only to discover the sorcerer was missing.

Thor gave the trodden ground a vexed, apprehensive look and then paced the area, checking for any sign of another presence. When he found none, he followed the sorcerer's scent toward the noise, frustrated at how difficult it was to move silently in this place.

He found Loki in a narrow clearing, cutting down a sapling. The tree was still young enough that Thor could circle its trunk with one arm.

He shifted up from his low stalk and stepped into the area. "You should learn to eat food raw. It'd taste better."

Loki didn't deign to answer and continued chopping.

Thor snorted and left him to it. He began to explore the new location, staying close to the clearing; they were far enough from the path now that he wasn't confident he could find his way back after dusk.

He returned when he heard the sapling fall. Thor watched in bemusement as Loki cut branches away from the trunk.

"There are better places to sleep," he said. The spot was free of most of the thorny plants, but the trees still crowded in too close. "I heard a river this way."

"I'm not camping here," Loki replied, tossing the branches into a pile. "Can you carry all those?"

Thor eyed them and then shrugged, not wanting to commit to a chore.

"Take as many as you can," Loki ordered. He began to drag the trunk back into the undergrowth.

"The path's the other direction," Thor reminded him.

"All it leads to is a cliff and a long drop," Loki said. "We're going this way."

Thor huffed, unsurprised at yet another trap. He eyed Loki for a moment longer, and then decided sleep had restored the sorcerer enough that Loki could afford to compel him to obey. Thor scooped up an armful of branches. "And what's this lead to?"

"A house of mine," the man answered.

Loki struggled with the tree as he walked, repeatedly forced to stop and free it when stumps of the branches snagged in the brambles. Thor watched him with a raised eyebrow.

"You are slow," he eventually repeated, because he was growing slightly better at maneuvering through the undergrowth, making Loki's laggard tread annoying again. Thor had moved unhurriedly while he examined the forest; but he'd also rarely paused to rest, exacerbating his weariness. The slower he had to go to remain apace with Loki, the more fatigue dragged at him. "You should have cut it closer to where you're going."

"I wanted this one."

Thor tilted his head as Loki rearranged the trunk over his shoulder yet again before resuming his efforts forward.

"Is this more magic?" he asked, thinking of spells and ingredients.

"Yes," the sorcerer responded. Thor, finding the answer sufficient, left him to it.  
  
  
Loki walked through the barrier with such ease that Thor didn't realize it existed until he felt the suction along his skin. It wasn't impenetrable, like the one the sorcerer had first trapped him in; but it didn't want to yield to him. It clung viscously as he strode forward.

Thor dropped the branches with a growl and backed away, tail lashing.

Loki glanced over his shoulder, then paused and rested the trunk on the ground.

"It isn't a trap," he said. "It's to keep out unwanted intruders."

Thor remained in place, glaring distrustfully.

Loki exhaled and shouldered the trunk again. "My house is past those trees," he said, nodding forward as he started plodding again. "Bring the branches when you come, and be sure to walk between the two yews." Loki adjusted his grip on the trunk and added, "Come on your own, or when I finish I'll return and make you."

Thor's lips pulled back further at the threat.

But he didn't know what a yew was, or what distinguished it from the rest of the forest. Thor snatched up a handful of branches and shoved his way harshly through the barrier, and narrowed his eyes when he saw Loki flinch.

Thor took note of the two trees that the sorcerer walked between and followed.  
  
  
He dropped the branches again when they came in sight of the house, and went ahead of the man to lope around the structure. "This is **terrible** ," Thor said in disgust, unable to comprehend how anyone could build such an undefended place, let alone survive in it.

"You live in an underground tunnel full of reeking furs," Loki replied, hauling the tree through one of the open doorways. "I don't want to hear your opinion."

"How are you not **dead**?" Thor demanded, sitting back on his haunches and staring at the hut. Each of its four walls had a wide, open doorway in it; he could see past the one he was in front of and through its opposite to the trees beyond. "If this is your sense of a safe place, you shouldn't have survived whelphood."

"You forget the barrier," Loki reminded, dropping the trunk in the center of the room. "Go get the branches."

"Why every wall?" Thor demanded. "Doesn't it rain here?"

"Because this way I can't be ambushed," Loki replied with exasperation. "Regardless of their direction, I'll see anyone coming."

Thor cocked an eyebrow. "Did you make the barrier after you built this? I can see why you'd need it."

"It doesn't work on those who share blood with me," Loki said shortly.

Thor paused and studied him for a moment, and then dropped his gaze to the sorcerer's palm.

"Go get the branches," Loki repeated, turning away.  
  
  
Thor took care to walk between the yews in the same place as before. The barrier was no more inclined to let him leave than it was to allow him in again; but he discovered if he leaned into it with the shoulder Loki had stabbed and taken his blood from, it gave way more easily.

By the time he returned and dumped the branches by a doorway, Loki was chopping the trunk down the middle. He jerked his head when Thor stayed there to examine the interior more closely, smelling for any magic. "Come in and rest."

"You're too loud," Thor replied.

"Rest anyway," Loki said. "I know you need it by now. Those paths sap energy in the best of circumstances."

The thought appealed. The barrier was potent--grass grew between it and the hut, but there were few plants and fewer trees. Close to the walls even the grass ended, leaving only dirt and stones. Thor had spotted no tracks of animals, no trails of reptiles or close sound of birds.

As nests went, it was powerfully well-defended.

Even though the forest was unknown to him, its predators unassessed and its land uncharted, the barrier held it at enough distance that Thor could almost believe this spot was sheltered enough to risk a few hours' sleep. He only had to rest until he'd sloughed off the worst of his exhaustion.

But this spot was created and protected by Loki's magic. The sorcerer was the last thing he would willingly admit weakness to.

"Don't mistake me for you, half-breed," he snorted.

"Enough with the pretenses," Loki said, displeased. "You haven't paused since this morning. This place is safe enough for now, so sleep. I need you at your best when I have to move again."

Thor scowled. "You were collapsed most of the day," he retorted. "I could have slept plenty then."

"I know you didn't," Loki replied, glancing up at him, axe paused over the trunk. "I ordered you to guard me. You wouldn't have been allowed to sleep if I was too worn to defend myself."

Thor stilled, lips thinning at the realization that he was still under the spell Loki had put on him in the canyon. The sorcerer had only freed him from the half holding him there.

He wouldn't have slept in an unfamiliar area; but once he'd confirmed there were no threats in his immediate surroundings, he could have climbed a tree and hidden there until the aches faded. He'd even had the thought, for a brief moment--but then it slipped away, and hadn't returned.

" _Sleep, Thor_ ," Loki compelled quietly, still watching him. " _Sleep until you're well-rested_."

Thor strode toward him, but he didn't make it far. At the first step, the fatigue that had been slowing his limbs for the past hours increased a hundredfold, sinking him to the ground after barely a few moments of fighting it. The last thing he saw before his eyelids shut was Loki, looking at him in silence as he watched Thor go down under the weight of the spell.  
  
  
It was night when he woke.

Thor glanced about rapidly and saw the hut's floor was now littered with wood shavings. The gap in the roof had been patched with branches. A fire had been built in the center of the room, banked but dying now. He'd been moved. He was propped in one of the corners, but his hammer and belt still lay on the ground where he'd collapsed.

The sorcerer was slumped in the corner across from him, his arms folded and a wooden staff tucked upright in the crook of his elbow, asleep. He could smell the half-breed's blood again, along with the sharp and bitter tang of his magic. It soaked the air of the hut.

Thor rolled to all fours and started toward him. Loki jerked awake violently.

He lashed out reflexively with the new staff, twisting a hand by his side. It was fast enough that the wood caught the edge of Thor's chin before he could shift back. Loki froze a breath later, staring at him in the dim light--and then he flung his hand to the side.

Thor felt something malevolent and lethal roil the air past him as it sailed through a doorway to land outside. The smell of charred grass soon drifted into the room.

"Do **not** do that," Loki said evenly.

Thor paced up to him, forcing Loki to shift farther into the corner. "Don't **ever** do that to me again, sorcerer," he growled out.

"You're the one who startled me awake," Loki replied, pushing against his chest with the staff.

Thor grabbed his wrist and slammed it against the wall, leaning into him. "You know what I mean."

The man eyed him impassively. "Then obey me," he said. "And I won't have to force you."

Thor snarled and tightened his grip, then grit his jaw as a sharp pain spread along his knuckles. The smell of blood was thicker now. In the corner of his eye, Thor saw the sorcerer had carved lines into the staff and colored them with his blood.

"How many times must we do this?" Loki asked, an edge of strain in his voice as Thor continued to squeeze his wrist. "You are dully slow to learn, demon."

" **Never** do that again," he ground out.

"Then **obey** me," Loki repeated, and kneed him hard in the stomach.

Thor released his hand and rolled onto the balls of his feet while the sorcerer brought his staff down in front of him. Loki rubbed his wrist as he and Thor glared at each other.

Eventually, the half-breed broke eye contact first. He shifted his gaze to a point over Thor's shoulder, still scowling.

"How did you do that?" he demanded.

"Do what?"

"Enough pretenses," Loki snapped.

Thor glanced over his shoulder, but saw only the fire, the hammer and belt, and the corner. He turned back sharply to the sorcerer, thinking it'd been a trick--but Loki was still waiting impatiently.

"Do **what**?" Thor repeated in aggravation. "Wake?"

Loki narrowed his eyes.

But instead of retorting, the sorcerer only watched him. After several long, silent moments, he tilted his head as his expression shifted to something unreadable. Thor bared his teeth.

Loki huffed and made a brief, dismissive gesture. "Never mind."

" **Explain** ," Thor growled.

"No," Loki replied. He tucked his staff back into the crook of his elbow. " _Leave me in peace_." He settled further into the corner and added, "Do as you like until morning."

Thor snarled at him and--when Loki didn't acknowledge it--stormed out of the hut.

The moon was only half-full, giving only half-decent light. Thor considered prowling the area around the barrier to gain a better grasp of his surroundings, but Loki's instructions about the yews held him back.

It could have been another trick of the sorcerer's, playing on his lack of familiarity with the area to get him to follow willingly. Or it might be a genuine warning of danger if very specific, twisting routes weren't kept to. Both seemed likely with the man.

Sitting outside in the night, Thor was keenly aware of the distant sounds of the animals in the forest and the absence of insects nearby. It was similar to the space other creatures kept from his own nest, but more intense. Ants and spiders didn't shy from the temple grounds; yet the only sentient things within the barrier were himself and Loki.

As nests went, it was powerfully well-defended.

Only something that knew what it was like to be hunted relentlessly would go to such lengths.

Thor remained crouched outside, head cocked, and listened to the sorcerer shift within the hut before finally falling still. Once the man was asleep, he returned indoors and pulled his belt back on. The hammer pulsed once under his palm as he readjusted it, and for the briefest moment Thor had the feeling it was annoyed.

He frowned and shook the thought off.  
  
  
He didn't sleep for the rest of the night. But he did doze at times; and he underestimated how silent the half-breed could be when he tried. Thor roused again after dawn to find the hut empty.

He kept his lips pulled back from his teeth as he traced Loki's scent up to the barrier and past it. The sorcerer had taken the path between the yews, reaffirming Thor's wariness.

He shoved his way loose of the barrier and began to study the new area with much greater care than yesterday.

As the morning wore on and he never ran across any traps, he began to relax his guard slightly. He never discovered the path again, nor the river he'd once heard; but he did find a recently-used well. Outside the barrier, the tracks of animals existed once more, and though birds fell silent at his approach he could see them burst from the trees and flee when he came too near. 

Thor--convinced of the presence of food and water, and the absence of threats he couldn't overpower--felt moderately better.

He also discovered his hands and legs were no longer scraped up from the thorns and brambles.

It almost seemed an act of generosity by the sorcerer. But Thor suspected Loki's main concern was having his 'weapon' in its best condition. And he bristled at the thought of more magic being used on him while he was unconscious.  
  
  
As he moved further away from the hut and the clearing, it grew difficult to track the sun. Thor eventually climbed a tree, then hissed low at the sight of how far the forest spread around him.

Behind, in the north, it wasn't as bad. The trees broke against a mountain range nearby--Thor judged the distance at not too much time's run. A part of the morning at worst.

But, he corrected, that would be in his lands. Here, the undergrowth would slow him. So half a day; maybe most of one, since this place had pitfalls he was unaware of. Loki had mentioned a cliff.

He climbed back down and resumed his study of the area.  
  
  
Loki never returned that day.

Thor caught a few too-small hares and figured out how to unlock the well's mechanism to haul water up. When night fell and the sorcerer still didn't appear, Thor assumed he'd been somehow caught by his enemy despite the shortcut and too swiftly killed to summon him.

He slept poorly in one of the corners of the hut, still disliking all the openings, and wondered how he was going to find his way back home.  
  
  
It was early morning and he was outside the barrier once more when the predator began to approach.

Thor knew the signs immediately. Silence began to drift across the forest in a wave, animals and insects falling still, birds taking flight. Soon all that was left was the rustling of leaves.

He examined the spot he was in swiftly, weighing disadvantages. He wasn't used to trees and would be hard pressed if the creature could fly or climb swifter than him, but the ground was thick with brambles that snagged his loincloth even with it knotted and tucked into his belt.

Thor opted for the high ground and climbed a tree. He crouched carefully on the thickest branch above the leafcover, his tail curled underneath for balance.

A short time later, against the silence and beneath the leaves, Thor heard the soft clinking of the sorcerer's belts.

He narrowed his eyes and waited, until he caught the half-breed's scent and was sure he was alone. Thor noted that he was coming from the direction of the mountains, and slid down from the tree.

Branches broke around him as he did, and twigs and dead leaves crunched underfoot when he landed. As he rose, he heard the sorcerer pause and start in his direction.

Loki soon came into sight, pushing aside a tangle of thorns and bracing his arm against a mossy trunk.

"Clumsy," he commented with a half-smile. "I hope you weren't trying to sneak up on me."

Thor gave him a flat look before examining him closely.

The sorcerer was carrying two new, heavy sacks, one slung over his shoulder and the other propped in his arm. The tears in his pants were stitched up, and Thor could tell he'd bathed. He looked much like he had when they'd first met: ruddy, strong, and too pleased with himself.

Loki pushed away from the tree, gesturing for Thor to follow. "Come along, demon. I've got food."

Thor hrumphed, but saw no value in refusing. He rumpled a hand through his hair, trying to shake out the leaves. Something pinged against the head of his hammer.

The weapon thrummed violently and heated, stinging his leg. Thor jerked back and growled a warning at Loki.

The sorcerer had seized on his distraction. Loki stared at the hammer with narrowed eyes, his mouth pulled back in a grimace as he rolled a tiny gold bearing between his fingers. Another was lying half-visible in the undergrowth near Thor.

The hammer's vibration worsened, heating further, and Thor jerked the belt off and tossed it to the ground. His growl shifted from a warning to a threat as he crouched, not taking his eyes from the sorcerer.

A tendril of smoke curled up from where the hammer lay, and Loki winced and dropped the bearing.

He scowled at the hammer, rubbing his fingers. Thor didn't move.

The sorcerer muttered something under his breath. Then he closed his eyes and exhaled slowly.

Eventually he made an exasperated, dismissive motion before turning sharply. "Come along," Loki repeated, beginning to walk off.

Thor kept his gaze on him as he touched the hammer. The metal prickled angrily under his palm; but it had ceased vibrating, and was starting to cool down.

Thor picked it up by the belt and followed.

He paid close attention to their surroundings as he stalked the sorcerer. The forest's creatures continue to drop silent and disperse as Loki approached, far quicker than they had at the strange, unknown threat of himself. He noted the danger it signaled and kept the man in front of him.

Loki soon stepped onto a path clear of brambles. Thor stopped short of it. "Where did this come from?"

"It's always been here," Loki replied without looking back.

"No it wasn't," Thor said, refastening the belt to free his hands. "I crossed this area. It's new."

Loki paused briefly, glancing over his shoulder. 

"It's always been here," he repeated. "But it has to be uncovered to be of any use." The sorcerer nodded at the path. "Come, demon. I have more to do today. You're wasting my time."

"You've wasted days of mine," he replied.

Loki rolled his eyes. "Do you really want to sleep another night in that house you so deride?" he asked. "I'm not traveling after dark. If you hold me back much longer, you'll have to."

Thor exhaled harshly, but stepped onto the path. The corner of Loki's mouth curved back.

"Finally," he said, facing forward again. "This fear of magic of yours is...." He tilted his head as he began to walk. "Well, understandable, considering where you're from. But still tiresome."

"I don't fear magic," Thor scowled. "I just don't trust **you**."

"Wise," Loki agreed, and Thor snorted.

"Does your enemy only move at night?" he asked, shifting his head so his horns wouldn't catch on a low-hanging branch. "Is that why you fear it?"

"Caution is not the same as fear," Loki replied, and Thor snorted much more deliberately.

"It took you over a day to hunt that little amount of food," he pointed out. "If you were any more 'cautious,' you'd starve."

Loki gave him an irked look over his shoulder. "I had to go to three houses to get enough without rousing suspicion. Stop grousing, or I won't share."

Thor made a doubting and rude noise. Loki replied by chucking a bag at him.

"If you won't be quiet, be useful," he said.

Thor's response was ruder yet; but the bag smelled of fish and meat, so he slung it over his shoulder and kept walking.

As they made their way back to the hut, Thor paused occasionally to sniff the air and the ground and the plants that stopped short of growing onto the path. He never caught a trace of the half-breed's blood.

Thor eyed the path and wondered whether Loki knew other kinds of magic he hadn't seen him use yet, or if the sorcerer had uncovered someone else's spell and taken it for his own purpose.  
  
  
In the hut, Loki built a new fire using the remaining branches and his bloody, ruined clothes from the canyon. Thor made a face at the smell and went through the sacks.

Loki split the rasher of meat and the line of fish, handing Thor half of both still raw before tugging a pan from his satchel.

Thor tried an egg after watching the man break and fry one in the leftover grease, and found to his surprise it tasted better cooked. He demanded more until Loki finally scowled and kept the last ones for himself.

The vegetables were a novelty, mainly because he'd had few since climbing so high in the demons' lands. Vegetation grew best in the lower areas, and what little there was in his own land he left to feed the small prey that fed the larger predators that he hunted. The bread he was unimpressed by; and the bread-smelling liquid burned his throat, making him jerk back in surprise and causing Loki to double over laughing until Thor tossed the bottle at his shoulder.

"Don't waste it," the man chided, still sniggering as he picked it up from the ground. "That's good ale."

Thor just grunted.  
  
  
When they were done, Loki stowed the sacks in his satchel and then obsessively swept the room, throwing out every fragment of tinder and cloth before scattering them and the ashes into the grass. Thor watched in bemusement through one of the doorways, away from the dust.

"I thought you were in a hurry," he finally said as Loki stood in the room and turned slowly, scrutinizing it.

"It has to be clean," he muttered. "Anything left behind he could use or replace."

Thor tilted his head.

He studied the man as Loki kicked a stray leaf out a doorway, examined the hut again, and finally decided it met his needs. As Loki left and started toward the barrier, Thor rolled to his feet.

"Just how powerful **is** this sorcerer tracking you?" he asked.

Loki's hand clenched around his staff. He made a low and agitated sound in the back of his throat, and strode aggravatedly toward the yews.

Thor interpreted the answer as 'stronger than me,' and followed.  
  
  
A small distance from the barrier, Loki paused and pressed his staff to the ground, murmuring. A few moments later, he pushed aside a clump of nettles with the end of it, revealing another grassy, half-worn path.

Thor noted that the sorcerer spoke louder than usual, gripped the staff tighter, and leaned heavier on it through the spell than he'd ever done before, even when he'd been less well-rested than now.

He glanced at the rough, fresh wood of Loki's new staff, and then stepped around the nettles and onto the path.  
  
  
It was close to dusk when the trees began to thin. Thor had begun to hear traces of other life--something besides the forest animals--when Loki halted and held up a hand.

The sorcerer reversed the spell on the path, leaving them standing abruptly in the midst of leaves and undergrowth. Loki remained still a few moments longer before bringing his hand up to his face.

"Come here," he ordered.

Thor gave his back a narrow look, but took two steps closer, until he was within reaching distance of the man's cloak. He wrinkled his nose as the smell of the half-breed's blood suddenly sharpened.

Loki turned around, and Thor caught sight of a smear of red on his thumb. He moved back rapidly.

" _Stop_ ," Loki ordered.

Thor stumbled to a halt as nettles bit into his heel and ankle, realizing that he was only backing further into the forest--without a path now, and on the cusp of nightfall. He gripped the handle of the hammer as Loki stepped toward him.

"Enough," the sorcerer said. "You can't go walking out there looking as you do."

Thor shifted in agitation as Loki ran his thumb over the hollow of his throat to smear the blood, unsettled by the vulnerable feeling of the sorcerer's touch on his neck and hating the knowledge that trying to fight or force Loki back would only activate the spell in him. He curled his free hand into a fist when Loki rested the tip of his staff against his chest and began murmuring.

Thor held down a shudder as the cold, slick feel of magic began working over his skin. He glanced down as the spell settled on him, and then jolted and bared his teeth.

"What **is** this?" he demanded, grabbing a fistful of the dark blue cloak that had settled over his shoulders. It felt real, and scratchy and unpleasant, under his palm. His hand was no longer its normal color, but a tan one like his chest--and his demon markings were gone.

"A disguise," Loki answered. "You can't go into the village looking like yourself."

"So you made me look **human**?!"

"Somehow you must bear the indignity," Loki drawled. Then he warned, "But don't forget, it's only a glamour."

Thor stopped scrutinizing his hand to scowl at him. "What?"

Loki whacked one of his horns with the back of his hand, causing Thor to jerk away and growl reflexively. "Those may not be visible, but they're still there. People will notice if things get tangled in thin air around your head, and I don't care to be hung."

Thor paused. "What?"

"Demon summoning is frowned on even by those who tolerate or respect sorcery," Loki answered. "Our worlds are supposed to remain separate."

The half-breed tugged his cowl forward more and combed his hair further over his ears. "Come on."

Loki led him past the edge of the treeline and onto a dirt road. Thor followed, fidgeting with the pants and tunic and boots.

"Will you stop already," Loki finally said in exasperation. "He won't let us stay if you look like you have fleas."

Thor glanced up from wrenching on his pants and stopped short in the middle of the road.

"It's full of humans," he accused, glaring past Loki at the buildings beyond, half-visible in the falling gloom.

"Towns generally are," Loki agreed. "Come along. Try not to look so disgusted until we're finished eating."

"I'm not going in there," Thor said flatly.

Loki tilted his head skyward and exhaled dramatically.

"Yes, you are," he replied. "You've no choice about that. You can only choose whether you do it of your own will or by compulsion."

Thor's lips pulled back slowly from his teeth as he glared. Loki watched impassively.

"Your luck will run out one day, half-breed," he warned. "You'll regret all you've done then."

"I doubt it," Loki murmured. "Regret is not to my nature. And don't call me that again while we're here, or I'll make it so you don't speak at all. _Now follow me, Thor_."

Thor hissed out a long and angry breath, but finally began trudging up the road after him toward the village. He kept a hand gripped tight around the hammer's handle.  
  
  
Once they were through the gap in the wooden walls surrounding the village, Loki entered one of the closest buildings. Thor followed but stopped beside the door, shifting agitatedly as he took in the sight of so many humans gathered into one room. Several looked at him, and Thor felt his skin prickle. He kept his grasp on the hammer.

"You again?" one of the humans said, standing up from where he was feeding the fire. "So no one's managed to murder you yet?"

Loki smirked. "Is this how you treat good paying customers, Olaf?"

The man muttered something under his breath and came over.

Loki fished three coins from his bag and laid them on the table. "Dinner and breakfast, and a room for the night, for myself and my companion."

The man glanced over Loki's shoulder and gave Thor a long look. He adjusted his footing again.

"I don't want trouble," the man said evenly, and more people in the room looked at him now. Thor had to struggle to keep from lashing his tail, so it wouldn't disrupt the cloak.

Loki glanced behind him, gave Thor's grip on the hammer a brief vexed look, and then turned back to the other man and waved a hand negligently. "Excuse his poor manners," he shrugged. "He mentioned he hasn't traveled before."

Thor made a face. The man eyed him and repeated, "I don't want trouble."

"Then I won't be trouble," Loki smiled, spreading his hands. "But I do want a meal and shelter. I'm sure we can accommodate each others' wishes."

The man gave him a doubting look, but eventually picked up the coins. "It's a disme for two meals," he said to Thor.

Loki pulled another coin from his bag and dropped it into his hand.

The man gave the coin and then Loki a brief look, but didn't ask questions. Instead, he pulled small knife from his pocket and began scraping at the metal. He examined each one close to the fire afterwards; and then he started tapping them hard against one of the tables.

"This is becoming rude," Loki commented.

The man gave the remaining untested coins a suspicious look, but finally stopped and dropped them into his pocket.

"Take a seat," he said, jerking his head at the general expanse of the room. "Lorelei'll bring your food and drink soon."

Loki headed into the room and gestured over his shoulder for Thor to follow.

The sorcerer chose a spot in the corner, putting himself facing the fireplace and Thor with his back to the wall. He curled his tail along his leg beneath the table just in case, and tried not to fidget again with his clothes. The tunic was sleeveless, so at least his arms were free; but it pulled strangely whenever his belt shifted. The pants dragged uncomfortably against his legs as he moved, and the boots were terrible. Thor kept curling his toes and shifting his feet, trying to dig his claws properly into the wood, but only ever touched leather instead.

The other humans shifted away from them after they sat, and the ones that came in afterward glanced at Loki and then went to the other table. A woman brought mugs of ale and, later, bowls of stew. Thor drained both; the ale was weaker than what Loki had tricked him with, and the stew had too many seeds and not enough meat or marrow. Thor eyed the bowl once it was empty.

"How do I get more meat in the next one?" he asked.

"You don't," Loki replied. "A second serving would cost more money, and look suspicious."

Thor frowned. "I'm still hungry."

"So am I," Loki said, lowering his voice as he drank the last of his ale. "Normal humans wouldn't be. Bear it."

Thor dropped the bowl on the table with an annoyed noise. Loki rolled his eyes, then pushed back and rose to his feet. "Let's see what corner I've been shoved to this time, shall we?"

The room the woman showed them was up a flight of stairs and at the end of a hall. Its ceiling tilted down sharply; Thor had to duck as soon as he stepped through the door.

"Ah, this one again," Loki drawled, slightly crouched himself. He tapped his staff against the floor. "Predictable. That leak had better be fixed."

"It's the only one open tonight," she answered.

"Of course," Loki said dryly before waving her off. When she shut the door, Loki pushed his cowl back.

"Don't let those get too far from you," he warned when Thor started to shrug free of his cloak. "If they separate from your skin, they'll dissolve."

Thor glared down at his boots. "I have to keep wearing these?"

"Until we leave tomorrow," Loki answered, propping his staff against the wall beside a chest and pouring some water into a bowl sitting on top of it. "It'll be good practice," he added, glancing over his shoulder and raising an eyebrow. "By tomorrow, you might be able to act as though you've worn clothing before."

Thor made an annoyed noise and shoved a hand against the bed. It gave far too easily under his palm, squishing and sinking around his wrist. He shook his head and pulled his hand away. "This is for sleeping? It's too soft."

Loki snorted as he rinsed his face. "You're the only person I know who's ever said that."

"I am not a person," Thor countered.

Loki exhaled shortly. "You're sleeping on the floor anyway," he replied, drying his face on the edge of his cloak. "That should be hard enough for you."

Before Thor could retort, there was a knock at the door.

Loki glanced at it sharply before grabbing his staff and pulling his hood back over his head. "Yes?" he called with a frown, dragging his hair over his ears once more.

The door pushed open, and Loki quickly dropped his hand. The woman stepped into the room, a bundle tucked under one arm.

Loki arched a brow. "Lorelei?"

She held out the bundle and he took it, eyebrow still raised. She gave him a coy smile.

"I noticed your companion was still hungry." She glanced past him to Thor, and her smile widened. "I know it's still probably not enough for a big man like you, but I hope it'll help."

Loki made a suspicious noise and started opening the bundle. "Hm."

"...Ah," Thor hazarded, since she was still looking at him.

Lorelei tilted her head and gave him a considering look. "Let me know if there's anything else you're interested in," she murmured.

"Stop it," Loki said. "I found him first."

She lifted her chin and gave him a very different considering look. "That's quite a new-looking staff you're carrying."

"Have you recovered from the dragon so quickly?" Loki replied emotionlessly.

Lorelei took a step back and narrowed her eyes.

A moment later she left the room, tossing her hair over her shoulder before slamming the door shut. Loki smirked and turned back to the bundle.

"Another sorcerer?" Thor muttered, wondering just how many he was surrounded by now.

"Hardly that," Loki replied.

He held his staff over the food for several moments, frowning in concentration, before finally dropping the bundle on the chest. Loki tore the loaf of brown bread inside in two and tossed half to him.

"What's that?" Thor asked, nodding at the remaining food.

"Cheese," Loki answered. "And butter." He picked up the tiny crock as he answered and started to reach into his boot before apparently remembering his knife was gone. He pulled one from the satchel instead.

Thor found the idea of congealed milk strange when Loki explained the cheese, but ate his share when it didn't seem to make the sorcerer ill. Loki kept the butter for himself.  
  
  
Thor pulled the blanket off the bed when Loki returned to the door. The man glanced at him just long enough to roll his eyes.

He rumpled it into a tolerable nest while Loki locked the door. The sorcerer tossed the key onto the chest, and then pressed his staff against the latch and murmured under his breath.

Loki frowned at the lock afterward. Thor watched him tap his fingers against the staff before eventually reopening the cut on his thumb and running a thin streak of blood over it as well. Only then did he sling his cloak onto the bed.

When he set the staff beside it, Thor nodded at the wood. "It's not as powerful as your old one, is it?" he asked.

Loki gave him a sharp look.

"It will be," he answered. "Not that it'll do you any good before then."

Thor only studied him until Loki made an annoyed sound and dropped onto the bed. He began unlacing his boots.

Thor sat on the blanket, keeping his gaze on Loki. "If demon summoning is unacceptable, why do so many try it?"

Loki made a disparaging noise. "What's your definition of 'so many'?" he replied. "The only sorcerers your kind know of are the ones that come to your lands. Believe me, there's far more out there. And far, far more humans that magic has nothing to do with."

Thor tugged at one of his boots, trying to loosen the confining leather. "Why don't you hide your ears with a spell?"

Loki started to frown again before shaking the expression away. Instead, he toed Thor's boot with his still-shod foot. Thor pushed him back.

Loki pulled up his leg and began unlacing his other boot. "Do you know how much effort it takes to create something from nothing?"

"I'm not a magician," Thor said flatly.

Loki huffed. "It's considerable. The darkness and my hood are sufficient concealment; I don't need to waste more effort on a spell."

Thor gave him a look. "Don't, or can't?"

Loki glanced at him, irritated. "I'll take that blanket back," he threatened, kicking his boots to the floor.

He soon curled up on the mattress, wrapped in his cloak. Thor gave up on making the clothing comfortable and settled as best he could in the nest.  
  
  
Breakfast was decent but unsatisfying, like dinner. The woman dropped their plates on the table and kept a distance from Loki; the sorcerer ignored her.

Once they left the building, Thor looked around warily at the number of humans moving on the street. A few blinked and stared at him as well, but most glanced at Loki and then looked aside.

"Are we done here?" Thor asked. He didn't relish the thought of more travel alone with the sorcerer, but preferred it to being outnumbered in the midst of enemies.

"No," Loki replied. "I have more business here. I'll be finished by the afternoon."

Thor checked the sky and tugged agitatedly on his cloak. Loki glanced over.

"Calm yourself," he said with a half-smirk. "I'm leaving you at my first stop. You'll only have to abide the presence of a few humans, not a horde."

Thor started to wrap his tail around the man's leg, barely caught himself in time, and grasped him by the shoulder instead. Loki paused and looked over again, eyebrow raised.

"If you think you can abandon me in this place, you are wrong," Thor said lowly. "It's a morning. **Send me back**."

Loki exhaled through his teeth. "I cannot afford to be rid of you yet," he said bluntly. "But that doesn't mean I'll give you access to all I have."

The sorcerer narrowed his eyes as he regarded him. "You've proven you're clever enough. If you'd been wiser, you would have played a fool." He shrugged his shoulder sharply, trying to knock Thor's hand off. Thor tightened his grip.

" _Let go_ ," Loki hissed quietly.

Thor made himself release the man, his scowl deepening as he curled his hands under the cloak. "Keep your oath," he warned. "Or else."

Loki snorted and turned forward. "If I feared retribution, my life would be much different and far duller. Come on."

"There's a difference between not fearing retribution and not thinking of its consequences until it comes," Thor murmured.

Loki shot him another look over his shoulder, lips pulled back in a silent snarl before he remembered their surroundings. Thor smiled faintly.

The sorcerer jerked forward without further response and began striding up the street.  
  
  
Loki led him to another building off the wide road, smaller and more cramped and smelling of things that made Thor's nose itch--almost magic, but not exactly.

A woman standing behind a counter looked up when they entered, then made a face. "They said you showed up last night." She turned aside and called, "Jane! He's back again!"

Loki entered without paying her much attention. Thor paused by the doorway, taking in the surroundings. Once Loki was deep enough into the room that he was past the woman, Thor saw her move something behind the counter.

He frowned and stepped inside, unpleasantly aware that the sorcerer was his best chance to return home.

But a moment later the woman brought her hands back into sight and resumed her work with an object on the counter. The sound of something clattering came through another doorway. The only other human in the room was a man, watching them from his seat at a table piled with more items.

The man had some bulk to him, but he was older than Thor and didn't look as fit as he should be to have survived to his age. If he wasn't another magician, he wouldn't be a threat.

But the woman was hiding something out of view.

With the face she'd made, and the way almost all the humans in this place looked at the sorcerer, it was likely a weapon. Thor would have to defeat her first and then fight the man, and do it quickly before the unknown third human in the other room could react.

Another, light-haired woman strode into the room and banged a wooden object onto the counter beside Loki. "It's an optical trick," she said triumphantly.

"Ah," Loki drawled. "The 'scientific' term for an illusion?"

"No," she answered, irked. "It's carved well, but all you have to do is look through the patterns and you can see the supports. So, an optical trick," she finished, emphasizing the last words.

Loki hummed in the back of his throat, still smirking faintly. "Different words, same meaning," he responded. "If you lack the ability to see through the patterns, there's no separation between the two."

"Unless there's actual physical injury preventing it, you're just going back to that 'can we trust what our eyes see is real' debate. And that's philosophy," she said with a scornful wave.

Loki's smirk widened for a moment before he tilted his head to indicate Thor. "I have business to do this morning, but my companion needs a respite from traveling. Let him stay here until I return."

The light-haired woman started to look suspicious as she glanced past Loki to Thor. ". . . What kind of trouble are you in?"

She looked at Thor as she asked; but Loki answered. "Have I ever brought you trouble?" he smiled.

"There's that whole section of the town wall they had to rebuild," the first, dark-haired woman mentioned.

Loki barely glanced over. "That was not my doing," he replied. "I can't be charged on other people's actions."

The dark-haired woman looked skeptical.

Loki returned his attention to the second woman. "He's in no trouble, nor will he cause you any," he promised. " _He'll not harm the lot of you, either_."

Thor twitched as the magic slipped over him--and then he noticed with sharp interest that it felt weaker than usual.

Thor looked at Loki closely as he flicked through his memories, and he realized this was the first time the sorcerer had ordered him obliquely instead of directly.

Thor noted to himself that even this spell had its limitations. He glanced at the older human when the man shifted in place.

But the man was only rubbing a thumb against his temple with a vague frown. Thor soon returned the bulk of his attention to the sorcerer, and the woman he suspected was armed.

The second woman made a doubting noise and gave Thor another look. Loki turned and started for the door.

"I didn't say yes!" the second woman told him.

Loki clapped the older man on the shoulder and gave him a friendly smile. " _Keep him out of trouble, would you?_ "

Thor started to scowl, and then went still as he realized he felt no magic accompanying the words.

This compulsion wasn't meant for him.

The man shook his head faintly, and then nodded, fingers still pressed to his temple. "Yes, of course."

"Erik!" the second woman huffed, at the same time Loki said, "I'll return in the afternoon."

"You're too nice to him," the second woman muttered, giving Erik a pointed look. He rubbed a palm across his forehead, looking as confused with his behavior as the women were frustrated.

"Oh." Loki paused on the threshold and glanced back. "On the topic of illusions."

When the second woman returned her attention to him, Loki bowed briefly. His cape exploded into a flock of birds.

The dark-haired woman shrieked and ducked under the counter, and the man stumbled back against the wall. The other woman yelled at the sorcerer, but he only laughed and shut the door behind him, trapping the birds in the room with them.

Thor finally pulled his attention from Erik and batted away several of them as the man ducked toward the window and the woman tried to catch one.

"No! I need samples!" she exclaimed when Erik shoved the window open.

"Jane, they're attacking us," he retorted.

"They're just panicked!" She jumped for one of the birds but missed catching it. "Don't let them all escape!"

Thor, half-exasperated by the terrible hunting skills in evidence, slung off his cloak and used it to net half a dozen birds before they could fly away. Erik chased the rest out the window as Thor twisted the edges of his cloak up to trap the prey inside.

"Thank you," Jane told him, sounding a little surprised. She shoved her hair back and came over, holding out a hand. 

The dark-haired woman pulled herself up from beneath the counter, scowling. "Would you please just agree that magic exists so he'll quit doing this?!"

"Magic doesn't exist," Jane retorted, as Thor handed her the make-shift sack. "It's all either prestidigitation or something that hasn't been properly explained yet."

The cloak shivered in her hands for a moment before dissolving. The birds broke loose, sending Jane stumbling away with a cry and driving the dark-haired woman back under the counter. Thor cursed as he remembered Loki's warning about his false clothes too late.

He caught several of the birds again after Erik left and returned with a sheet. Jane chased more back into the room and down from the shelves with a broom while the dark-haired woman grudgingly helped. Thor managed to grab and stuff them into the new sack as well, as Erik struggled to hold it without releasing any of the others.

When they got the final bird into the bag, the dark-haired woman gave him an offended look.

"You two must be great friends," she muttered, pulling a feather loose from her hair. "You've got the same mean sense of humor."

"We're not friends," Thor growled, offended himself before realizing she had no reason to think otherwise.

He shifted on his feet in frustration. "I forgot he told me it would disappear if I stopped touching it. ...I am sorry," he added with an exhale, partly because he disliked being grouped with the sorcerer and partly because their building was a mess now. If this was their nest, he'd damaged it.

"Wait, what?" Jane asked. "Why would it disappear if you stopped touching it?"

Thor shrugged a shoulder. "I don't know magic. He said it was just a glamour, and if the clothes separated from my skin they'd dissolve."

"...Why did he do that to your clothes?" the dark-haired woman asked. "Did you make him angry?"

"They aren't my clothes," Thor replied. "He made them."

"Made them how?" Jane asked, coming closer and examining his tunic.

"And **why**?" the other woman added.

"Magic," he answered. "So I could come into town."

The dark-haired woman gave him a bemused look. She seemed about to ask something else, but then paused and made a face. "All right."

Thor only glanced at her occasionally; Jane was circling him, staring at his clothes, and he kept the main of his attention on her, unsure if he was being threatened or not.

"May I?" Jane asked, before tugging on the hem of his tunic, dragging a thread free. Thor shifted on his feet again but stopped short of a warning growl.

Jane stared at the thread as it shimmered, and let out a low exhale as it disappeared from between her fingers.

"What do you mean, 'magic'?" she asked, pulling away another thread and twisting it for a second before it evaporated as well. "How exactly did he make them?"

The dark-haired woman mumbled something about the bigger question, but then went back to her work with the object on the counter.

Erik continued to watch him warily. Thor kept him in the side of his vision as he answered. "He said a spell and used his staff."

"Sleight of hand," Jane muttered, but then she frowned and ripped another thread loose. She frowned deeper as it shivered and vanished under her intense gaze. She sounded a little less certain when she added, "Another 'illusion.'"

"Glamour," Thor corrected.

She gave him another look. "Is there a difference between the two?"

Thor, wondering why she kept asking him these questions when he'd already said he didn't know magic, shrugged again. "He called these a glamour, and they used blood." He nodded at the seething sack Erik held. "He called those an illusion, and they didn't." None that he'd smelled, anyway, and he knew the half-breed's scent by now.

"Blood," Jane repeated.

"Yes," Thor said.

She looked at him for a long moment, and then went over to the counter and pulled a piece of paper away from the pile by the dark-haired woman, ignoring her miffed exclamation.

Jane took her pencil as well. "Just for a second, Darcy."

"That is a lie and you know it," the other woman replied.

Jane came back and looked him in the eyes and said, "Tell me exactly what he did for that spell."  
  
  
Thor related everything except the words Loki had said, since those had been low and foreign to him. He watched in amusement as Jane wrote rapidly and unraveled his tunic even more. He'd determined the act wasn't a challenge, and decided not to bother taking offense.

Years ago, one of his neighbors still had a couple of his whelps living with him and his mate--ones too young to seek their own territories yet--and they'd been just as excessively curious whenever Thor crossed the border. The only difference here was that human roughhousing seemed tamer.

Darcy grumbled and scrounged up another pencil and went back to her work. Erik rummaged through the nest for something to put the birds in.

Thor noticed that he glanced back into the room often. He regarded the man closely whenever Jane left off her questions to write more, but Erik rarely came over to the two of them. Observing Thor frequently apparently met the requirements of his compulsion.

His tunic was in tatters by the time Jane left the room, scrawling on more paper and muttering to herself. Thor pulled off the remainder and let it dissolve as it dropped to the floor, glad to be rid of the awkward thing.

The rest of the morning passed slowly. Darcy showed him how to use the abacus at her desk, and tried to teach him how to cook stew until Thor asked why everyone was determined to ruin good meat. She gave him a confused, slightly disturbed look at that.

Thor left the kitchen space to her soon afterward, aware that the longer he spent in the humans' proximity the more he risked revealing himself.

He was less inclined to attack them now to escape. None of the three seemed strong compared to him, or to be sorcerers. The fight would be short and petty, bordering on cruel. He'd rather keep it unnecessary.

He pulled an armful of books from the shelves instead and flipped through them curiously while Darcy cajoled Jane to come eat and then harangued and finally just brought the food to her. Erik gave another bowl to him, full of broth and marrow and vegetables but no meat.

Thor wondered if he'd offended Darcy with the comment instead of potentially giving himself away. Human expressions were strange--they smiled to show their teeth often, but rarely seemed to mean it as a threat.

Erik sat with him even after they finished eating. He taught Thor how to write his name, but grew nervous when Thor drew the symbols he'd seen around the temple's ruins in order to ask about them. The human called them dangerous and burned the paper in the kitchen fire.

He frowned as he did it, and soon frowned even more before apologizing, saying that they were only old tales and he'd overreacted.

Thor let it lie. He'd studied the man enough to recognize the pained draw to his brow and the abnormal tinge his sweat took when a compulsion was driving him.

When Erik remained agitated and rubbing at his head, Thor had the man teach him how to spell more words until he calmed down, this time using only the books and their safe writing. It took longer for Darcy to stop eying him warily over the abacus.

Thor deliberately ignored the insult in the action. Of the three humans, she was the only one who wasn't under a spell or possibly half-mad, and was therefore the least threat. Especially since he'd removed the sharp, mechanical weapon that had been under her desk while she was in the kitchen and put it by his chair.

When Loki returned in the early afternoon--wearing his cape again, and with his rucksack now fatter--he gave Thor's bare chest a disapproving look. "Wasteful."

"I had to catch the birds," he answered.

"Thank you for those, by the way," Darcy added.

"You're welcome," Loki replied. There was a clatter from the room Jane had been holed up in.

She strode into the room a second later and slammed a sheaf of papers and the birdcage triumphantly on the desk, making Darcy jolt back. The birds fluttered wildly in the confines, squawking.

"' **Magic** ,'" Jane said over the noise with a grin--a challenge? Derisive? Proud? These people would be easier to understand if they had tails. "What if it's just an aberration in reality?"

Loki's expression didn't change, but Thor felt the sudden coiling of tension in the air. He pushed to his feet, away from the confines of the table and chair.

"Interesting theory," Loki smiled, showing teeth, and this Thor knew for a clear threat. Jane didn't seem to recognize it. "Care to elaborate?"

"If we take your claim as true, that there **is** something out there that's more than sleight of hand or tricks or optical illusions," Jane replied, "that doesn't mean it's 'magic' the way people normally mean the word. There's no spellwork, no alchemy or gods called on. Some people just have the ability to twist the proper rules of the universe."

"Ah, the 'proper rules of the universe,'" Loki repeated. "That favorite phrase few can define beyond anecdotes of commonality. Still, an interesting theory from you," he added, still smiling. "But how would it work?"

Jane finally recognized Loki's expression for what it was. Her grin disappeared, replaced with wariness; Erik and Darcy had unconsciously moved back.

"...That's the question, isn't it," she said carefully. "What would someone have to be, to be able to do that?"

"So, not even a theory at all," Loki mused. "Merely a hypothesis. Maybe you'll have something more concrete by the time I'm back."

"Maybe," Jane agreed.

"Are we done here?" Thor asked flatly.

The path to the door was open--he could drag Loki out and away from the others, possibly before the sorcerer could complete a spell. If Loki tried to compel him to hurt them, he could fight it long enough to get them away. He didn't want to attract attention in this place.

"Yes," Loki answered, turning to go. As Thor began to follow, he heard the sorcerer mutter under his breath.

In the corner of his eye, Thor saw Jane pick up the birdcage from the desk and then deliberately step on the hem of Loki's cloak.

It snagged backward, tugging the cowl off his head. Thor sank to a crouch, ready to lash Jane against the desk with his tail so Darcy and Erik would be preoccupied with looking to her while he wrenched Loki out of the building--and then he blinked as he realized the half-demon's ears looked the same as any human's.

Loki, who'd been murmuring something a scant heartbeat before, merely turned and gave Jane an annoyed look.

Thor rose slowly to his feet, still tense.

"I'm sorry," Jane said evenly, pulling her foot away. She lifted the cage. "I didn't want you to forget your birds."

"Oh, you can keep them," Loki replied with a bright, lethal smile.

Thor grasped his shoulder and hauled him from the building.

Loki slammed an elbow into his stomach when they were barely on the steps and growled, forcing loose of the grip. Thor let him go.

They were less than halfway down the street when there was a loud shriek. Thor glanced over his shoulder.

Darcy had wrenched open the door to the humans' nest, to fling the birdcage out onto the road. The birds inside fluttered raggedly at the bars as the cage rolled in the dust, their moldering feathers dripping loose from the putrefying flesh beneath.

Thor gave the sorcerer a look. Loki bared his teeth and stomped down the street.

Before long they were past the village's walls. The sorcerer soon turned sharply off the road and into the forest as a cart began to trundle up behind them.

Thor huffed at the thought of slogging through the undergrowth again, but kept pace. At least his boots and pants had a purpose here.

"If you didn't intend her to learn what you are, you shouldn't have given her hints," he said, leaning aside to dodge a branch the sorcerer had forced out of his way.

"I was **trying** to have her consider the matter without implicating myself," Loki snapped.

"Why bother?" Thor replied.

Loki clenched his staff tighter, twisting it in his grip. 

"I know **why** it works," he bit off. "I want to know **how**. And I needed someone less suspicious." He shoved aside another branch. "I should have known better than to leave a brute fool like you there."

"Am I a brute fool, or am I too clever to have access to all you have?" Thor replied with a slight smile.

The half-demon snarled at him over his shoulder. The corner of Thor's mouth lifted higher.

Loki rapped the staff abruptly against his leg, stripping away the glamour. Thor growled as nettles dug into his now-unshod soles.

The half-breed smirked back at him. Then he turned and resumed tromping through the woods.

The next time they passed a tree with low-enough branches, Thor caught one with his tail and smacked Loki in the face with it.

The man cursed furiously and whirled, nearly clipping Thor in the jaw with his staff. Thor ducked into a crouch to dodge it, ready to spring as Loki glowered down at him.

A line of blood marked his face where the branch had cut it. Thor remembered, abrupt and visceral, how the half-demon had bit and clawed and struggled under him in the cave days ago. He remembered the way it left him wondering how well Loki would do in a **real** fight, and just what he planned to do with the upstart after he'd eventually won it.

Thor's grin widened and he tensed further, ready to move at the half-demon's next attack.

Loki shook as he glared at him--but it was the trembling of another predator holding itself back from a fight, not of prey too panicked to flee. Thor's tail lashed as he smiled, openly provoking, daring him to take the challenge.

Loki finally let out a long, slow breath through gritted teeth, and forced his shoulders to relax.

Thor thumped his tail on the ground before he recalled the nettles, frustrated and disappointed and still half-expecting a trap. But the sorcerer only wiped the blood away with the back of his fingers. He spat deliberately to the side before turning around, and continued forward with measured steps.

"Demon," he sneered.

Thor rocked onto his feet, curling his tail over his shoulder to keep it away from the thorns, and followed.

"Less than one," he replied calmly; but the half-breed still shied away from the bait.  
  
  
They slept in an abandoned, crumbling house that night. Thor curled up in the rafters after Loki begrudgingly shared a portion of the food in his rucksack. The sorcerer settled in a corner behind an arc of symbols traced around him like a shield.  
  
  
Whatever enemy was chasing him, it soon drove Loki to shun human civilization and all but the most rudimentary of pathways. After a week, Thor grew used to wearing the thigh-high boots the sorcerer had finally created for him. The forest had reduced his loincloth to barely-useful shreds.

The sorcerer's own clothes hadn't fared much better. He had a new pair in his rucksack, and changed into them during the few times they passed through a village to acquire more supplies or sleep in an inn if the weather was particularly wretched. Thor noted that the man was using spells less and less often.

After a week and a half, Thor found himself growing accustomed to the situation.

His territory had to be taken over by now. And his reputation was likely besmirched if the interlopers had found any scent of the sorcerer. A long series of battles to regain it all and defend against challengers was inevitable, so it was no longer something he had to try and prevent.

Instead, he grew more curious about the sorcerer Loki was running from.

He asked a few times, but Loki--already a mercurial companion, and increasingly prone to fits of silence and snappishness rather than witty retorts or dry amusement as the days trekked on--wouldn't speak of him at all. Not to give Thor any information about the enemy the half-breed was clearly intending to throw him at; not to explain the reason for all this fleeing and fear. Neither cajoling nor taunts, or even random speculation, worked save to rile Loki further. And since the man always, barely, restrained from taking the challenge to fight, even that grew dull over time.

Thor found himself strangely missing the earlier, more arrogant version of the sorcerer. He'd been a presumptuous half-breed magician, but he'd had confidence and a mad thing's version of bravery. He'd been insufferable, but interesting.

Now Loki was brooding, easily spooked, and so palpably nervous it forced Thor to sympathetically respond--a fact that was exhausting his patience as minutes and hours and days passed and still no threat arrived.

As time went on, Loki picked routes and paths seemingly at random. He killed birds without gathering them to eat, and poured restlessly over a motley of objects they encountered: burnt twigs, a cracked spear-handle, an awl. When a human in a wide-brimmed hat tried to enter the half-collapsed building they were sheltering from the rain in, the sorcerer slit his throat without a word and then spent the rest of the day running until Thor forced him to halt when he saw Loki was about to collapse.

The half-demon huddled by the fire inside the overhang Thor had dragged him to, shivering long after he'd stripped out of his wet clothes. Thor curled up on the opposite side of the flames and watched him. He kept his hearing focused for any sound of approach; but there was none.

Thor wouldn't admit it out loud, but Loki's fear was beginning to leech into him.

Loki had decimated the demons' population. He'd made his way deeper into their lands than any sorcerer had ever gone before, and successfully fought and trapped Thor himself. He performed spells that should be impossible, and could apparently manipulate magic in a way unique to him alone. He'd learned to peel apart the fabric of the world to enter a void that he used for the mundane purpose of shortcuts. There was a feral streak in him. For all that he was half-human, aberrant, too reliant on spells and lacking a real demon's bulk and horns and claws, he was the most dangerous opponent Thor had faced so far.

Yet there was another sorcerer out there more powerful than him--so much more so, that the reckless, mad half-demon chose to constantly flee rather than face him.

The thought made Thor shiver with a mix of anticipation and concern. Loki's head jerked up.

"There's nothing out there," Thor replied, curling in closer to the fire.

Loki remained twitchy for a time regardless; but eventually he tucked his chin back behind his knees.

Loki finally passed out from weariness before dusk. Thor hunted game until it grew dark, but kept close to their camping spot.

Insufferable or not, terrified or not, even rabid and intending to sacrifice Thor to his enemy to save his own skin, the sorcerer remained his only way home.

If he had to kill Loki's enemy first to make the man send him back, he would do so.  
  
  
They detoured into a town two days later to purchase more food. Loki started to enter an inn, but he backed up abruptly when Thor wasn't yet over the threshold. Then he turned and fled.

Thor glanced around the room and saw nothing dangerous--a man and woman were talking at one table, two men were listening to an older one in an eye-patch by the fire, and another woman was sharpening knives at a table in the corner--and smelled no magic. But the sorcerer was already halfway back to the village's walls.

Thor loped after him and caught up outside the wall. When the sorcerer veered off the road and into the undergrowth beside it, Thor exhaled with deliberate exasperation but made himself trudge after him.

"Why are you keeping me here if all you wish to do is flee your enemy?" he said with irritation. "Do you plan to run forever?"

"Yes," Loki said shortly, shoving aside a clump of thorns and then ripping his cloak free with an angry, panicked noise.

Thor blinked.

He watched the man stride through the plantlife. Loki moved heedless of the way the thorns caught shreds of his clothing, and ignored the tracks he left behind.

"You're doing it poorly," Thor pointed out. "We've been circling the mountains. If you want to run, you need to either go straight or hide better."

"Quiet," Loki said testily. "He'll be here soon, and then I'll be gone. There was no point in leaving until he was close, it would just let him change his route."

Thor narrowed his eyes, not liking the implication of those words.  
  
  
His distrust was validated a day later, when Loki woke him before dawn and dragged him along in an agitated march through the woods for hours until they reached a lightning-struck tree.

Thor sank to a crouch as soon as he smelt the half-breed's blood on it. "No."

"Yes," Loki snapped, pressing his palms against the split wood. He jerked his chin toward the arch. "Come, now."

"No," Thor repeated.

"I do not have time for this," Loki growled out. " _Follow me **now** , Thor!_"

Thor dug his claws into the undergrowth and the wet earth beneath, and shook his head. He remained in place as he felt the magic start slithering under his skin.

He thought he knew what pain to expect from fighting the compulsion; but he was wrong. All the other times, he'd given in before the worst came.

Loki looked on in blank-faced annoyance as Thor refused to move, even as the magic seethed harsher through his blood and began searing his legs.

Eventually, he didn't think he could obey even if he wished to. The compulsion was tearing him apart for his disobedience. It shredded his sinews and then began lacerating his bones, so the marrow could boil out of them and scald the flayed remains of his muscles.

When Thor began retching from the pain, the sorcerer hissed out a breath.

"Enough," he spat. " _I rescind the order, Thor_. You damn fool."

Thor collapsed to the side, still gagging in agony.

The sorcerer crouched beside him and poked him in the ribs with his staff. Thor growled weakly.

"Useless," Loki muttered. "If he came on us now you wouldn't buy me more than six or seven steps before he killed you."

Thor forced himself to roll onto his stomach to cough out the last of the vomit. "If I live long enough to see you die it'd be worth it."

"You damn fool," Loki repeated wearily. "He doesn't intend to kill me."

Thor hacked out a sneer at the blatant lie. "Why all this running then, **half-breed** , if you've nothing to fear?"

"I didn't say that," he replied.

Thor spat into the grass and wiped an arm across his mouth. "What frightens a coward more than death?"

"Imprisonment," Loki answered.

Thor looked over.

The sorcerer prodded him in the ribs once more, not meeting his eyes. Thor summoned enough energy to swat the staff away.

Loki exhaled harshly and then pressed the wood against his calves.

When Thor felt the spell begin curling through his legs, he instinctively tried to roll away. Loki muttered an obscenity and planted a knee in the center of his back. " _Stay still_."

"I won't go back there," Thor grit out, struggling to throw the sorcerer off.

"You can't in this state," Loki replied flatly. "You'd die halfway through. Stay still and let me fix your legs, I **cannot afford this**."

His voice rose and cracked on the last words as the fear seeped through. Thor lashed his tail furiously--but even that drained what little strength he had left. One or two more compulsions from the sorcerer, and he'd have to either obey or fall unconscious, at which point the half-breed would likely cut his throat and run.

And the magic spreading along his legs now was cool and soft, not hurting. The opposite of before.

It could still be a trap. But he no longer had the ability to fight.

Thor forced himself to go still, ignoring Loki's muttered response, and let the spell curl into him. It didn't remove all the pain but it soothed most of it, reattaching his frayed sinews and turning his bones back from liquid to solid. After a time, Thor could tell he would be able to walk again. He might even be able to run temporarily, if he had to.

Loki pulled away and rocked onto his feet, leaning on the staff. "That will have to do. Up, demon," he ordered. "You'll move one way or another. Thanks to you, we now have to hide. Worthless, idiot, brute monstrosity."

"I'd expect you to be used to hiding by now, coward," Thor muttered as he staggered to all fours.

"You know **nothing** ," Loki hissed. " _Now **walk** , Thor!_"  
  
  
They hid in a cramped space made of fallen, rotting trees and warded with so many spells Thor could barely breathe through the magic. The sorcerer grumbled and insulted and flinched at every sound, making recovery impossible as Thor's nerves were scraped raw.

" **Enough** ," he said at last, curled up in the spot least saturated with magic. Thor didn't open his eyes as he ordered, "If you wish me well enough to fight your enemy for you, half-breed, **be silent** and let me rest."

The sorcerer muttered something under his breath, but fell quiet.

Thor listened to the man wrap himself up in his cloak and murmur another spell to ward off the damp of their cranny. He pressed his nose harder to his arm and tried to ignore the taste of magic coating his tongue.  
  
  
When Thor woke, better for the sleep but with his legs still deeply aching, it was night. The sorcerer was slumped against one of the trunks and dozing fitfully, his staff tucked into the crook of his arm. He stirred as Thor stretched, but didn't quite wake--the protracted fear and flight had been taking a steady toll on his strength, ripping it away in tiny but relentless mouthfuls.

And yet Loki preferred that torturous road to defeat rather than facing his enemy headlong while still strong. As if he'd chosen life, in whatever miserable and weary aspect his running could manage, over the consequence of losing.

As if he were certain of losing, no matter what, when the fight came.

Thor watched the sorcerer for a long time. Finally he settled against a stretch of bark and closed his eyes, and made himself remember walking through the void.

Thor forced himself to relive the memory, turning it over and examining every detail he could recall, until at last he was no longer so panicked by the recollection. Eventually he could hold down his reflexive growl and keep his tail still. Loki almost roused a few more times in the interim, but the sorcerer always sank back under the weight of his exhaustion before he fully woke.

When Thor had leeched enough power from the memory that he felt able to walk through the void without humiliating himself like last time, he shifted to a new spot in the cranny and then smacked Loki's legs with his tail.

The sorcerer woke instantaneously, attacking--but Thor had learned the motions he threw spells with over the past weeks. He knew what angle to be at to avoid Loki's barely-conscious casting. The spell lodged in a tree instead, crumpling the rotted wood of the trunk further inward.

Loki snarled. "How **many times** do I--"

"I'll take your shortcut, sorcerer," Thor interrupted. "If you pay me for it."

The half-demon narrowed his eyes. A moment later, he fumbled in his pack until he pulled out a long match, flicking it alight with a thumbnail.

Thor waited while his vision adjusted to the decreased gloom. He watched Loki rub an arm across his eyes as he struggled to wake up and gain the upper hand, to sort out Thor's intent and counter it. Attacking sleeping prey was shameful, something for the young and the weak, but Thor was no longer above taking what advantages he could get over the sorcerer.

"That is not how this works," Loki finally said--but too slow. He watched Thor warily as he jabbed the match butt into the dirt.

"Liar," Thor replied. "The balance between us is no longer even. I was repaid for being summoned for one fight, not for these days and days of wandering. If you want me to continue, especially through **that** , pay what you owe."

"Even if you **could** cease traveling with me, it would serve you ill," Loki reminded him. "You'll never return to your home without me."

"I'll find a way," Thor disagreed calmly. "You are not the only sorcerer in the world. If demon summoning is so frowned on among your kind, there will be rumors and talk to follow. I'll find others."

Loki narrowed his eyes further.

Thor expected the sorcerer to raise more arguments: his appearance, the bindings of the compulsion, the fact that even if he found another magician capable of accessing the demons' lands he'd still run the risk of being bound to them. But ultimately, Loki only snorted.

He cast a deliberate look at their cramped space before tilting his head to stare down at Thor again. "And just what price were you considering, demon?"

"Information," Thor responded, and Loki blinked. "Tell me about this enemy sorcerer."

The man's lips peeled back slightly. "It's no concern of yours."

"You intend to throw me into battle with him while you save yourself," Thor said bluntly. "And I know nothing of his skills or ability or strength. Tell me about him."

Loki lifted his shoulders briefly and leaned against a trunk. "There's nothing to say, demon. You may fight him, if he catches up too soon. If you do, you will die. He's as skilled at warfare as he is at magic, enough that even you should be satisfied."

"That is not useful," Thor said flatly. "Is his magic like yours? What weapons does he use? How old is he, has he beaten demons before and what were their names?"

Loki exhaled exaggeratedly, tipping his head back. "No. It depends. Mid-aged, yes and why would I have bothered learning that?"

Thor growled low in the back of his throat. "'It depends' on **what**?" he demanded. "And mid-aged for humans? Or do sorcerers live longer, if they aren't foolish enough to try binding demons?"

Loki lidded his eyes, but it didn't fully conceal the calculating look he gave Thor.

"...They can," he said carefully. "With the right tricks."

Thor tilted his head slightly. "Like what, sorcerer?"

Loki made a dismissive gesture. "There's no use telling you."

"There is, if it will explain why you don't want to kill him," Thor replied.

Loki stiffened.

Thor curled his tail tighter. "Tell me the truth," he said, his voice low in the cramped gloom as the man remained tense. "Why are you so certain he'll imprison you rather than kill you? Why are you refusing to give me any information that would let me kill him?"

Loki exhaled again, harsher this time.

"Because I am bound by a vow," he gritted out.

Thor thumped his tail in annoyance--but this could be circumvented, eventually. "Bound in what way?" he replied, settling more comfortably against the trunk. "Are you unable to answer direct questions? Can you react to indirect musing?"

Loki snorted and shook his head.

"Close, but incorrect," he said, resting the staff across his knees as best he could in the tight space. "I'm not barred from seeking his blood," he murmured, lower, as if disliking even saying the words. "But I have significant disincentive to."

Thor thumped his tail much harder. "Make **sense** , sorcerer!"

"We swore we would never accept anything that was not offered to the other," Loki said flatly. "If I never accept death, it cannot be pushed on him either. **That** is why I know he intends to imprison me somewhere I can never be harmed, **that** is why I am not inclined to kill him, and **that** is why I choose to run, demon. It has nothing to do with cowardice. I'll not be made the base of someone else's spellwork, to live centuries in a cage denied all sensation just to extend another's life. Are we **finished** now?!"

Thor studied him with narrowed eyes. Loki glowered back.

"Am I to pity you?" Thor asked at last, curling his tail in. "The fate you're so desperately fleeing is the same one you set for me without a thought."

"I have no use for your pity," Loki retaliated. "And it is not. You're free to do as you please when I don't need you."

"I still know I'm bound," Thor said harshly. "I still live chained to your whims."

"Well," the sorcerer answered, shrugging inside his cloak, "now you see why I run."

Thor snorted mirthlessly.

Loki tucked his staff back against his arm. "You've been paid now, demon," he said shortly as he pinched out the match. "Rest so you'll survive the path. We leave by dawn."

"Your concern for my welfare is unconvincing," Thor drawled.

"I don't want you to fight him," the man answered, making Thor pause. "Anything that faces him will die. It would be a waste. I have lesser demons I could expend to buy myself time."

Thor shook his head. "No creature is invincible," he pointed out. "Not even a sorcerer. He'll face the thing that will kill him eventually."

"He already has it bound and chained in a place I can't reach," Loki replied, his tone smothered in sudden weariness. "It isn't you. You would die fighting him. Rest already, Thor. We must be gone tomorrow, he's too close now."

Thor watched him carefully. But Loki remained slumped against the trunk, his eyes closed as he huddled deeper into his cloak.

Finally, Thor curled back into his previous spot. "Why did you get entangled with someone so dangerous in the first place?" he asked as he settled. "You struck me as more devious than that."

"You've been paid," Loki repeated. "No more questions."

Thor huffed. But after he considered the matter, he decided the intensity of the secret Loki had revealed would likely meet the spell's parameters as repayment, even if it was sparse on the actual information he'd demanded.

He spat and scrubbed his mouth to remove the cloying taste of magic, and attempted to doze again.  
  
  
The next morning he kept his word, and followed Loki back to the tree and then into the void, gripping the sorcerer's shoulder tight enough that his claws ripped the cloak and nearly broke the man's skin. Loki only made the same soft murmuring sounds as before.

The walk was shorter than last time: only eight steps, in a direction that felt downward. But it was harder. Last time Thor had felt like he was trying to move forward while mired in quicksand; this time, it was like trying to walk through solid rock. Loki kept his hand gripped tightly around his belt, pulling him along until the sorcerer was panting harshly himself by the sixth step.

When they spilled out into the world at last, Thor's legs nearly buckled under him. He grasped around blindly, grabbing the sorcerer and the trunk of the tree. Loki sank to the ground under the weight.

"Off," he rasped, shoving Thor's arm aside. Thor braced himself against the trunk as Loki scooted away and slumped heavily against a short wall, still gasping for breath.

Thor growled low in the back of his throat as he gave in and crouched, frustrated at himself for not overcoming his hatred and terror of the void as much as he'd thought, for showing weakness in front of the half-breed yet again, for being weakened; and frustrated at Loki for being the cause of it. His legs ached far, far worse than last time.

"Oh, be quiet," the sorcerer mumbled, pressing his temple against the wall and closing his eyes. "It's your own fault. And it's over now."

"For how long **this** time?" Thor growled out.

"Long enough," Loki panted. "We're plenty far now."

"Liar. We went a shorter distance," Thor contradicted.

The sorcerer rolled his head back and forth loosely. "They don't work that way. We're more than far enough."

Thor grumbled under his breath but left the ruling on magic to Loki, and tried to make his legs stop trembling.

Once they were steady enough, Thor shoved away from the trunk and forced himself to focus on his surroundings.

He wasn't sure what to make of the new location. It was hotter than the forest, and enclosed in a way that felt more like a cave than a building. But there was sunlight slanting in through openings high above. Everything was made of the same pale, gritty stone, even the well Loki sat against, but there were carvings throughout that created latticed windows. The split tree was the only living thing in sight. Thor saw no opening to the sky that lightning could have struck through, and no sign of scorching on the upper windows or walls.

He thought several derogatory things about magic and tested his legs again.

When Loki pushed to his feet and rubbed his still-pale face, Thor tried to shake away the last of his weariness. "What is this place?" he asked, pacing the enclosed space and peering down a hallway that connected to it. There was no scents in the air save their own, and no sound of running water nearby.

"Abandoned," Loki answered, tugging his cowl off and absently combing his hair over his ears. "Safe enough, for now."

It was more answer than he'd willingly received from the sorcerer for days. Thor looked over his shoulder and watched Loki dust off an urn with the edge of his cloak, and noted the calm that was returning to the man.

He was still too worn from their journey to look relaxed. But the tension permeating his frame for the past few weeks was dissipating.

Thor reflected that he should've known better than to wish for the old version of the sorcerer back.

"That way leads outside," Loki said, jerking his chin at another corridor as he undid the rope from his pack strap and looped it around the urn. "Catch us something to eat."

Thor gave him a brief warning hiss in reflex. It was obvious by now that the half-breed didn't learn, but he couldn't let the presumption go unacknowledged. He went.

The land outside bore no resemblance to the forest, except in the areas far below the cliff. Thor still examined the entirety of the area for thorns before kicking away his boots and leaving them to dissolve.

By the time he returned from hunting, Loki had the camp arranged. Thor left the strange but healthy-smelling beast he'd caught with the half-demon and sprawled in a patch of sunlight as Loki skinned and cleaned it.

As he stretched out and let the sultry warmth seep into his flesh, Thor realized for the first time how much he missed his **lands** , the stone and heat and wind of them. He doubted they would stay here long, either--soon the sorcerer would grow restless and then they would resume walking again, without traveling toward a goal or returning to a nest.

He wanted to be back home. He was sick of this aimless wandering: even hunting different animals was beginning to lose its interest, since he couldn't bring the pelts or bones back to his nest. He wanted to return to the place he belonged.

Loki laughed as he peeled up the pelt, his cast-off cloak his only concession to the temperature. "I didn't realize demons were part barn-cats."

Thor thumped his tail halfheartedly and hissed another warning, not interested in an argument. Loki snickered again.

"Cook, half-breed," Thor responded.

"Ah, so you've come around to the civilized way of eating?"

"You know what I mean," he answered, stretching further.  
  
  
The half-demon dozed off later in a shaded, breezy corridor. Thor moved methodically through their surroundings in an easy lope, examining more of the buildings.

The more he searched, the more it reminded him of the temple he'd had his nest in. This place wasn't a ruin, but it had the same feel to as the temple's grounds, the same pulse of power in the stones beneath his palms and feet.

But it was far larger, with a much different design. Thor lost his path twice in the deepest corridors that held no windows to the outdoors. When he finally traced his way free, the temple was shadowy as the sky neared dusk.

He'd climbed the tallest column in the area and was trying to orient himself when he heard Loki approach. The sorcerer's staff and his fringed belts were the only noise here besides the wind and Thor's claws: there were no insects or birds. So there must be another barrier around them, somewhere.

Loki paused in the large courtyard below and tilted his head up, raising an eyebrow. "Part barn-cat, part ape."

"What do your kind build these places for?" Thor called as he began making his way down.

Loki lifted a shoulder. "If you mean humans, worshiping gods mainly. Or to conduct rites that call for their approval."

Thor frowned as he finished scaling his way off the statue and started climbing down the column it stood on. "Do those gods live here?"

"No, they visited," Loki answered. "Why?"

"This place isn't abandoned, it's empty," Thor replied. He dropped the last few feet and shook the dust from his hair. "You and I and that tree are all that's been alive here for a long time. Did you put up this barrier too?"

The sorcerer looked at him for a moment before he shrugged again.

"It was here when I found it," Loki replied, as he began to return the way he came. "It's been a long time since this god was worshiped."

Thor gave him a considering look as he fell in step beside him. "How old are you?"

"There's life to be lived in me yet," Loki replied with an amused snort. "Fetch dinner before it grows any darker--you'll have a harder time avoiding the rock slides then."

"That's the sort of warning you should've given the first time," Thor drawled.

"The creatures that cause them don't come out until after nightfall," Loki answered. He rapped the butt of his staff against the wall as they walked. "If you kill anything about this color with more than six legs, don't bring it back. They're poison."

"Those aren't only out at night," Thor rejoined. "I saw them by the waterfall earlier."

Loki stopped and stared at him.

The surprise on his face was sincere. Thor decided the delayed warning wasn't intentionally meant to harm.

"That's inconvenient," Loki murmured, and began to walk again. "I suppose those bindings had to fray eventually. Unless...."

He frowned before making a sharp motion. "Hurry, Thor. You need to be back within the walls before dark. They shouldn't have come this close so early."

"How poisonous are they?" he asked, rolling his shoulders.

Loki began to recount the lingering, purulent death of the last person he'd seen infected by the creatures. Thor left halfway through, unwilling to waste the remaining daylight.  
  
  
When he returned, hauling two more strange-looking but safe-smelling animals, he found Loki had moved the camp to higher ground. Thor tossed the beasts onto the building's roof and then climbed up himself, ignoring the half-demon's aggravated admonishment.

While Loki restacked the cooking implements the corpses had knocked over, Thor studied their location. He eyed the open walls of the courtyard critically. "How well can they climb?"

"Normal," Loki answered. He finished with the utensils and pulled a knife from his boot, sitting down to skin one of the animals. "They shouldn't be able to get in this far," he added; but he sounded less certain.

Thor frowned and continued examining the walls, thinking about the sluggish way the creatures had walked that morning, considering routes for attack and escape. "Do they move faster at night?"

"How quick were they when you saw them?" Loki asked. When Thor described it, he nodded. "More than that, but not by too much. The fire **should** hold them off. Even if they were out in daylight, they clearly didn't like it."

"Good," Thor answered. He settled in a loose crouch, resting a palm on the flat stone of the roof to feel the heavier pulse within. "There's more power here, too. That should help."

"Yes," Loki agreed, after a long silence. "This is the center of the quincrux."

"Can you use it?"

"If I must." He shrugged. "I doubt they'll make it this far. The bindings aren't completely gone."

Thor nodded, uninterested in the technical matters of the magic.

Loki rinsed his hands and pulled out a scroll after they finished eating. Thor glanced over as he stretched out on his back. "What's that?"

"A map," Loki answered distractedly, pinning down the curling edges of the paper with a knee and his plate.

Thor chuckled. " **You** , using a map?"

"I cannot improvise everything," the man answered dryly. Thor grinned again.

He dozed while Loki poured over the map. When the sorcerer yawned and went to sleep, Thor shook himself awake.

He settled into a comfortable position as he listened for the sound of anything coming toward them. The wind carried the scent of the creatures occasionally, but it was too faint to be ominous.

He stared at the night sky as he waited. Some of the stars looked like the ones he knew from his lands, only tilted strangely and in the wrong places. But they were recognizable. The ones in the forest and its villages hadn't been--they must be closer to the demons' lands now.

Thor glanced over at Loki, his head pillowed on his rucksack and his cloak pulled over him. Despite resting earlier, he was asleep again now, more deeply than Thor had seen since they'd begun running. The tinge of fear in his sweat from the past weeks was now gone; that enshrouding dread of his enemy was peeling away. Now all the half-demon needed was time to recover from the weariness of his prolonged terror.

Until he was found and hunted down once more.

This was how the half-demon had behaved before, when they went from the canyon to the forest: calm at first, then increasingly paranoid and terrified as he felt his enemy approaching. If the other sorcerer had ways to track him despite his shortcuts, he'd find Loki again here, and again at wherever he fled next.

And if Loki insisted on Thor's presence for protection, the endless hunt meant the man would never send him home--at least not for long.

Which meant Loki's enemy was ultimately Thor's own as well.

Thor continued to gaze at the almost-familiar stars until the sky shifted enough that it seemed halfway to morning. Then he thumped the half-demon awake with his tail.

Loki jolted and snatched up his staff. "How close?" he demanded blearily.

"They haven't come through," Thor answered, noting that the sorcerer hadn't reflexively attacked before speaking this time. "I've been watching for half the night. It's your turn."

Loki grumbled rude remarks about him, but shook aside his cloak and slumped into a sitting position. Thor folded his arms beneath his head and soon dozed off again.  
  
  
He woke at first light the next morning. Loki was already climbing down from the roof.

The sorcerer examined a series of lines cut into the base of the building's exterior, prodding at them and muttering to himself while Thor caught fish in the river a far distance away from the waterfall. One of the creatures was perched at the top, tucked in the shade under a rock; but it didn't move or come toward them. Thor kept it in his peripheral vision.

If Loki did anything to the lines, Thor couldn't tell. The man left them as soon as Thor hauled the fish over.

Loki discarded two with pale stripes, but declared the rest safe to eat. He returned inside with his half when Thor mentioned the creature at the waterfall.  
  
  
Whatever the state of the building's bindings, the creatures' daylight presence unsettled the sorcerer. It was still early morning when Loki used a healing spell to soothe the remaining stiffness in Thor's legs and said they were leaving.

They picked their way down a narrow, slick path of steps cut into the cliffside, so worn in places that they were more slide than stair. Loki prodded at the fragmented sections before treading along them gingerly. Thor occasionally pushed away fallen rocks blocking their route.

When they reached a plateau, Loki sprawled out beneath the overhang. Thor paced the area once to ensure it wouldn't crumble and then settled in a comfortable crouch while the half-breed rubbed his calves and muttered insults about the skill of the barrier's creator.

"When will we leave it?" Thor asked. Birds were flying closer; they must be near the edge.

"We already have," Loki replied.

Thor frowned. "When?"

Loki waved a hand upward. Thor looked back to the steps above, where the stairs had become significantly more worn and wind-smoothed, with more rubble and missing patches. He thought back, and remembered seeing Loki flinch briefly as he went from one step to the next.

"I didn't feel it," Thor finally said.

The sorcerer only shrugged without looking up.

Thor watched him with a narrowed gaze, curling his tail in closer. "Why are all these trees in such isolated places?" he asked, when the half-breed made it clear he was remaining silent. "Are there less humans than there used to be?"

"Probably not," Loki replied. "But the ones in populated areas get cut down."

"Hm," Thor said. "Is that were you first found them?"

The sorcerer glanced over. "Why these questions about magic suddenly?"

"You're too secretive," Thor replied. "You look at me suspiciously any time I mention something obvious."

"Sensing the greater power in the quincrux is not 'obvious,'" Loki said quietly. "If this is supposed to be a trick, demon, it's a poor one."

Thor thumped his tail in annoyance. "I'm not playing at your games, sorcerer."

"That's fortunate," Loki commented. "You'd lose so quickly it would embarrass us both. Yes, I noticed the first one by a village, just before it was cut for firewood."

Thor ignored his tone. "Cutting them doesn't let that void out?"

"It isn't sentient," Loki replied in mild amusement, settling more comfortably on the rock and propping his staff against the stone. "It isn't as though you're burning a door and leaving a gap. It's more...."

He paused for a few moments with a frown. Thor shifted from his crouch to sit, curling his tail around him.

"More like prising a lock from a door and then nailing a plank over the gap," Loki finally said, making a distasteful face. "There's really no way to describe it with simple metaphors."

"Maybe you don't know the magic as well as you pretend, if you can't explain it properly," Thor suggested. He smirked faintly when the sorcerer glowered before going on. "So cutting them down removes the path?"

"Something like that," Loki answered, again with that wary pause.

"Does cutting down only one tree erase it?" Thor asked. "Or do they have to be removed on both ends?"

Loki narrowed his eyes. "Why."

"If it only takes one, why don't you just trick your enemy into stepping in there and then cut away the entrance?" Thor asked.

The sorcerer gave him a very long look.

"I told you before, he can't take those paths," was all Loki finally said.

"You said 'only I can travel these paths,'" Thor disagreed. " **After** dragging me through one. Pull him into it like you did me, then flee while he's disoriented and destroy the entryway. Then you'd be finished with this."

"What a chillingly devious plan," Loki replied, raising an eyebrow. "Are you certain you're a true demon?"

Thor growled at him in the back of his throat. The half-breed just snickered.

"You can't run forever," Thor said shortly. "If you can't defeat him in a fight, then trap him and leave him to starve to death."

"I have been a terrible influence on you," Loki replied with a small grin. Thor scowled.

"It wouldn't work," the sorcerer added, his smirk dissipating. "He has allies in there."

"That squirrel?" he replied. "If it can't get out, how can it help him?"

"It could get to--" Loki cut off and waved a hand. "Regardless, he could still find the end of the path." He shrugged. "I'd have to destroy the entrances on both ends, yes. Even that's no guarantee he wouldn't manage to reach a new route and escape somewhere completely unexpected."

Thor frowned. "How long could he live if the place itself rejects him?"

Loki propped an arm on his knees and arched a brow. "Who can say?" he huffed. "That madman's doggedly gone into situations that should have killed him and come out alive and stronger for it."

Underneath the half-demon's frustration and weariness, there ran the faintest current of wry admiration.

Thor tilted his head and studied him. Loki noticed after a few breaths, looking over and then forcing his expression back to a blank one.

"The squirrel 'could get to' what?" Thor asked after a while. "Those other things you named? His pets?"

"Yes," Loki agreed, still regarding him narrowly. "Probably. Their range is nearly limitless."

Thor made an aggravated noise and glared out at the hills below them, craggy with rocks and spindly trees. He flicked his tail against the stone.

"It was not a terrible idea, I suppose," the sorcerer conceded with a little shrug. "But too unlikely to work. And I don't care to give away the location of any more of my paths. It's bad enough he's discovered the place of these."

"If you don't want them found, quit smearing your blood all over them."

Loki rolled his eyes. "That doesn't matter. He won't smell it, and he can't see it unless he's close."

"So he keeps to inhabited areas," Thor said evenly; and the sorcerer tensed.

Thor flicked his tail more sharply. "That's why you know these empty places so well, isn't it? He's less likely to come here, or to that hut, or that canyon, than somewhere with humans living in it."

When the man didn't answer, Thor curled his tail in. "Is his power fed by humans?"

"...Not directly," Loki said at last. "But he'd rather manipulate others to achieve his goals than use blatant magic."

Thor snorted once before laughing.

Loki gave him a flat look. "I don't see how you can doubt me when you've never met him, demon."

"No," Thor replied, still grinning. "It's strange to think there's someone out there **you're** more honorable than."

Loki blinked. "What?"

"You may use nasty tricks, but you don't pretend you aren't a magician." Thor shrugged. "That makes you better than someone who's a liar twice over."

The half-demon stared at him silently.

Thor stopped smiling as his scalp began to prickle at Loki's expression. He uncurled his tail, watching carefully while Loki's face shifted to a empty mask.

He remained wary when the man finally moved; but Loki only stood and shook out his cloak. When he didn't speak, Thor eventually rose to his feet.

Loki finished brushing off his cloak and collected his staff, and turned to the flight of steps leading downward. Thor readjusted the hammer in his belt and prepared to follow.

"That's enough," Loki said emotionlessly. "I don't need you anymore. _Go back to where you came from, Thor_."

He jerked as his scar began to burn.

Thor reached for it, then stopped abruptly and grabbed at the overhang as he remembered the last time this had happened. "You--"

He cut off and gripped the rock tighter as the stone shifted under his feet. The sorcerer started down the steps without looking back.

The rock slid further beneath Thor's soles, and then once again ceased to exist. The stone in his grasp evaporated as well, leaving only grit on his palm. He flailed out against the sudden absence and ended up losing his balance as the emptiness beneath him was replaced with loose dirt and pebbles.

He skidded downward for a few heartbeats before he thought to scrabble for purchase. Thor dug his claws in and clung tight to the ground, disoriented, panting with adrenaline and fury and panic.

He heard the echo of stones clattering below. Thor jerked his head up and looked around, snarling savagely.

He was on one of the interior mountains in his territory. On the lower ground, another demon stared up at him in a mix of surprise and deliberation.

Thor deepened his growl and shifted to lunge.

The demon fled. Thor watched it go, and noted that it didn't take the best path downward--it chose the quickest way, sending it over slick patches of rock and loose soil. It hadn't held this area long enough to become familiar with it, not in the way he was.

Thor began to pace after it He tried to quell his lingering shakiness, wary of ambushes and of the memory loss he'd faced the last time he fought after being wrenched between worlds. He didn't know how his lands had been divided up, how many interlopers had come in and where they'd built their nests; once he knew the new boundaries, he could plan his challenges. Blind rage wouldn't help him now.

Thor stalked after the intruder, pushing away thoughts of that raw look on Loki's face to focus on the immediate necessity of reclaiming his territory.


	5. Acceptable Consequences

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains references to violence and rape as unquestioned cultural tenets.

~

It took weeks to recover his territory.

Thor tracked the demon who'd seen him reappear on the mountain back to its nest. He challenged and killed it there so he had a place to begin, and took its loincloth to replace his own tattered one. Then he began stealthily moving across his lands, working out where the new divisions lay and where each intruder had built their nests.

He was surprised no one had claimed the temple, until he came closer to it.

Something had happened while he was gone. The magic Loki had originally unleashed had spilled out of the underground tunnel and bled into the ruins: the thick tang of it permeated the air.

Thor stood on the lip of the valley surrounding the mesa, growling quietly to himself as he realized he'd lost his nest for good. He couldn't return to the temple--he'd choke in that miasma. The hammer vibrated slightly against his thigh, almost too low to be noticeable.

Thor paced the edge in the direction of the stone bridge. He had to enter long enough to check that his former neighbors' graves remained undisturbed. Once he knew that, he could return to reclaiming the rest of his territory.

When he reached the arch, he realized the air was clearing.

Thor frowned and held back, and examined the area more closely. The wind still carried the scent of magic as it blew past; but it was only a scent now. It didn't burn his nose or leave a cloying taste in his throat. It was still far more potent than it had once been, but it could be lived with.

Thor narrowed his eyes and began to carefully cross the bridge.

He could **feel** the magic pulsing through the valley beneath him, swirling and eddying between the rock walls of the mesa and valley and brushing against his tail where it was curled beneath the bridge for balance. It rose up into the air, but it didn't spill over the valley's sides or press in on him. He could still move and breathe.

The hammer was still vibrating at his side.

Once he was across, Thor set the weapon warily on the ground and padded deeper into the ruins on all fours, keeping low. The air remained the same.

His neighbors' graves were just as they had been the day he was summoned. His nest was untouched, the pelts and scattered bones still in the same places. In the ruins a pillar had toppled and broken half a wall, but that wasn't unusual--hard storms and strong winds had done the same before. There was no scent of intruders or animals. No one had been here since he was removed.

Thor returned to where the hammer sat and crouched beside it, eying it for a very long time.

At last he circled the temple ruins and the underground tunnel twice more, making certain they were empty. Then he refastened the hammer to his belt and left the mesa.

Thor went to the demon who'd taken land between the temple and the mountain he'd already reclaimed and challenged her. When she submitted for leniency after losing, Thor let her live on the condition that she fled beyond his original borders and that she warned any other demons she crossed while doing so that he had returned--and that he had now used up his store of mercy.

Three demons abandoned their claims after that. Thor recognized the scents when he went to pace the territories; they had moved into his neighbors' lands after their deaths, and had seen what Thor did the last time challengers attempted to take his area from him.

One demon hadn't learned of his return yet and refused to ask leniency or mercy. Thor killed him and laid the corpse beside the boundary rock with his newest neighbor, so the bones would serve as a reminding marker.

The last two demons took the longest. They were a mate pair, and held more territory than any of the others had; and one of them had a heavy trace of magic to her. They'd taken a swath of land encompassing the two northern mountains, and had apparently kept the area long enough to have a rough idea how to use the terrain to dodge and stalk and ambush.

Thor finally caught the magic one when he trapped her in a rockslide during a storm. It was an underhanded attack, but too much time with Loki had made him unwilling to risk any more spells. He didn't give her the option to ask anything, and smashed in her chest while she mocked him for being caught by a sorcerer himself.

Thor removed her heart and burned it in a tree that had caught fire from a lightning strike during the storm. He started to leave after that--he wanted the deep gouge running from his side to his shoulder to heal before he challenged the remaining demon--but then he remembered Loki's talk of life extended via spellwork.

Thor wrested off her head and burned that as well, and hoped no resurrection could overcome the loss of both. He limped back to the temple.

The last demon chased him down when she discovered her mate's corpse. She caught up with him when he was in sight of the temple, and didn't even snarl out a proper challenge before attacking.

The fight was the third worst he'd had. His wound was still bleeding heavily, and the other demon seized on his weakness. But he did the same to her own: the grieving fury made her more frenzied than calculating, an exploitable flaw that even her strength couldn't counter for. Thor finally threw her into the valley around the mesa to give himself a few breaths' respite to wipe the grit from his side.

He jolted in surprise when she started screaming.

Thor lurched up to the rocks' edge and then stared down in shock. The demon was writhing on the valley floor below, clawing at the air around her. Her screaming never stopped as she thrashed; it only worsened.

Thor paced shortly on the rim, growling low in the back of his throat as he watched. Then he forced himself down into the valley.

The air was still heavy and hot and thick with swirling power, but it only sluiced over him like a humid wind, leaving no pain or harm in its wake. The demon had screamed her throat raw.

Thor hauled her back up and out of the valley, and slashed her neck open on the rocks. He made sure she died there, in the fresh air and out of the corrosive magic.

Behind him, where it had fallen among the dirt, the hammer was vibrating again.

Thor washed himself clean in the stream nearby, jaw clenched tight as he scraped all the pebbles and dirt from his wound. He slept heavily in his nest that night.

The injury was nearly healed when he finally woke the next morning, with only a fresh, tender scar in its place. Thor carried the demon's corpse back to where her mate's lay, and then pushed both into a deep crevice before covering it with a large boulder. He buried the ashes of the magic-touched demon's heart and head under another stone, and paced the area.

When he determined that it was empty, he finally went hunting for the morning's meal.

His territory was his again. Now he only needed to defend it from intruders.  
  
  
He had to pace his borders constantly at first, to ensure that no demons were slipping through to scavenge and to make it clear to his neighbors that he had returned and intended to defend what was his. No one challenged him.

No one spoke to him, either. For days and days after he reclaimed his territory, he saw nothing of his neighbors save their shadows as they left the shared border when he neared. He had no gossip, no shared tales, no news of what had occurred in the demons' lands while he was away. His longest conversation since returning had been with the interloper he let live.

Thor realized with intense discomfort that he'd grown used to a daily companion.

It had been bad enough before, losing the stability and what he'd realized in hindsight was friendship when his neighbors were murdered. He had been angry, restless, bored, dissatisfied in their absence.

And now, without even the smart-mouthed little half-breed around, he was forced to realize he was lonely.

Thor poured his aggravation into aggressively stalking his borders, until the neighboring demons drew back even further and left an unclaimed buffer between him and them. The loss of scents eliminated communication entirely, further fueling his frustration.

Someone claimed it eventually. Thor began to pick up the demon's scent in different places along the track of land, but he never caught sight of it.

He forced himself not to enter the area to seek it out. His territory was as wide as he could maintain; he could not risk his presence being taken as a challenge to fight. He did not need more land.

And he had clearly been marked out as one caught by a magician. Killing the neighboring demon and then **not** claiming its land would go just as poorly: it would make it look as though Thor was now either too weak to expand his borders, or too feral to be permitted in truce-agreed company.  
  
  
The new neighbor stayed elusive, always remaining out of his sight, even when Thor settled on rocks or by streams near their border and remained there peaceably for long stretches of time.

He finally accepted that the demon wanted nothing to do with him. It was holding to their boundary lines, never crossing even to chase down fleeing prey; Thor could demand little more.

With nothing for him outward of his territory, Thor turned his attention inward.

The temple grounds remained hospitable to him. But they were still changed, still soaked through with far more power than they'd ever had before. Thor never forgot the demon dying in the bottom of the valley.

He kept his nest in the same place. He explored the rest of the corridor and the storage room one last time, hauling out the trunk and a few other interesting objects and stashing them closer to his nest. Then he shut the rest of the doors between it and the room.

Shutting didn't automatically seal them. Thor tested each, and found they would pry open again with no more resistance than the door's own weight.

But it did seem to slow the leak of power from the place. If nothing else, the swelling magic confined by the valley now stayed at a steady level rather than continually growing.

With that resolved, Thor turned to tracking the animals populating his territory, and to seeing what predators had grown too wide-ranging and needed to be culled.  
  
  
More time passed. The days settled back into the steady rhythm Thor had wished for while forced into aimless wandering with Loki. He hunted, slept, bathed and sunbathed, toyed with the objects he'd taken from the storage room until he grew bored of them, monitored the temple ruins for a sign that the power was beginning to swell out of it again. He had no hunting or mating partners. His neighbor remained an enigma.

Thor grew exhausted by his boredom.

Nothing felt exciting if it couldn't be shared. Hunting had no purpose past putting food in his stomach; there was no one to join him or tell tales with anymore. The only scent among his pelts was his own. The only sounds he heard were those of animals and the wind, and the occasional distant patter of his neighbor. He felt disconnected from everything he'd wished to return to.

Then one night he woke to the sense of reality rippling around him.

Thor snarled and scrabbled out of his nest, thinking wildly of the horrible sensation of solid ground evaporating, thinking with more abstracted panic of the void in Loki's shortcuts. He hadn't heard the sorcerer's voice.

But as he crouched in the tunnel, growling heavily, the feeling disappeared. He remained where he was.

Thor frowned, still taut with apprehension, and wondered if the summoning had failed or if Loki had changed his mind midway through. He hissed out a long, wary breath.

The smell of the half-breed's blood drifted to him.  
  
  
Thor found him collapsed on the ground near the entrance of the tunnel. The reek of fresh blood cloyed in his throat as he approached; he trod on Loki's fallen staff before reaching him. There was blood beneath his feet as Thor crouched beside his curled form.

"What have you done now, sorcerer?" he demanded, narrowing his eyes. He was used to the gloom within the tunnel, but he couldn't see wounds at this angle.

Loki made a gurgling noise.

Thor frowned deeper. He started to pick the sorcerer up, to haul him outside where there would be more light.

But as soon as Loki was jostled, he screamed thinly--and Thor gagged as his throat constricted hard, as if a band had been wrenched around it. Loki went limp a few breaths later.

Thor put him down. He glanced around for Loki's bag but didn't see it anywhere, and started rummaging through the sorcerer's clothes instead. They were wet and heavy with blood--he had to peel the tunic up from Loki's pants. It didn't all smell like the half-breed's own.

Thor found a knife in one boot, two matches in the other. One was too blood-soaked to be of use; he had to scrape the second with his claw the way he'd seen Loki use his thumbnail three times before it finally caught.

The match flared, the stink of sulfur and magic briefly overpowering the blood. Thor looked down at Loki before letting out a slow hiss.

Someone had cut his throat.

The upper part of his tunic was shredded, the torque missing and his cowl hanging off one side where it'd been sliced. Loki's face and neck and shoulders and clothes were smeared with blood; one hand was still curled around his throat, but the other had slipped away when he fell unconscious. His palm was once again stained the same blue as Thor's own.

 _"The spell is set, demon,"_ Loki had told him. _"The only thing that can break it is my death."_

Thor stayed in his crouch, holding the match as he stared down at the sorcerer bleeding out beneath him.  
  
  
Not much later, Thor exhaled slowly through his teeth.

He wondered if the half-breed even understood what he had done, coming into another demon's nest in this state. He set the match down away from the blood.

Thor confirmed that the sorcerer's throat was healing, then tugged the cloak loose and pressed it hard to the wound. Loki shuddered, but didn't wake. Thor shook off another stinging warning along his own throat.

With the bleeding staunched, Thor left the hammer humming beside Loki and went to gather supplies.

By the time he returned with a jar of water and a small uprooted tree, the match had burned a third of the way down. Thor tucked it into the spindly branches and waited until it caught before checking Loki's throat once more.

It hadn't healed noticeably further. Thor frowned again, and went to his nest.

He carried back three of the largest pelts and dumped them against the wall opposite the fire. Then he tugged the half-demon closer to the burning tree and set to work picking the fabric out of his wound.

Loki shuddered and flinched more, and roused enough to try struggling away for real before sinking back into unconsciousness. Thor grit his jaw against the pain radiating up his hands and forearms, and continued until he was sure all the tatters were out. The wound had healed a little further.

Thor cut off the rest of the tunic rather than fight with the sodden fabric, tossing Loki's belts aside as he did. He rinsed and licked the blood from him, holding the half-demon down by the shoulders and thigh when Loki started to struggle again. When he was clean enough, Thor put him on the pelts.

Loki soon fell still once more. Thor moved his staff away from the fire, and finally settled in a comfortable crouch against the wall.

Loki began shaking not long after. Thor draped a pelt over his chest, careful to avoid his throat, and resumed his place.  
  
  
By dawn, the half-demon was still shuddering with fever but had yet to wake. Thor roused himself from his dozing crouch, and went to refill the water jar and hunt down breakfast.  
  
  
Loki slept for four days as he recovered. Thor had found another deep gash across his hip and thigh, but it was healing badly by then, turning puffily red-streaked and smelling sour and dangerous. Thor had cut it back open, to squeeze out the pus and prise loose the desiccating fabric within. Loki half-woke twice during the process, trying to squirm away, gasping in agony. By the time Thor had finished and rinsed out the wound, he could barely use his hands.

He caught larger beasts than usual, piling the bones in the corner afterward. He uprooted two more trees and carried them over the bridge, and started to wonder how he would keep the fire going once they were gone. The next closest one grew by the mountains, and he'd have to drive off an old hawk he liked for it.

He returned to the tunnel more frequently than usual during the days, checking that the fire still burned and Loki hadn't kicked away the furs and grown chilled.

He did not check on his neighbors' graves as he used to. He couldn't go to them with Loki's scent on him without an unpleasant feeling of shame.

He shifted his nest up the tunnel, between Loki and the entrance. Thor slept poorly there, feeling exposed that close to the entrance after he'd spent so long deeper inside it; but he reminded himself that no demons would survive crossing the bridge or breathing the air long enough to attack him. Loki might still be alive, but he was a half-breed and a sorcerer, a reasonable exception. And Thor left the hammer close to where he slept.

Thor could travel freely among the ruins even without it, but he knew there was something unnatural in the fact. It was he who'd been changed, not the power in the temple.

He disliked the idea severely.

But he disliked the thought of dying more, so he learned to accept it.  
  
  
The fifth afternoon he returned to find Loki's spot empty.

The pelts were rumpled, and the sorcerer's staff and pants were gone from the corner. The tunic and cape had been flung into the fire. Loki's hadn't set foot on the stone bridge, or even crossed the tunnel's exit.

Thor tracked him deeper underground, growing more wary as he passed through each opened door. It had cost the half-demon to force his way down: Thor could smell his blood again, splattered in a light trail on the stone.

He found Loki in the storage room, kneeling as he chipped slowly at the cracked floor where Thor had flung the hammer all those long months ago.

The sorcerer's staff was glowing from the carved lines in it, but the light was feeble. Thor knew it wasn't enough for the half-demon's weak night vision.

"You're bleeding," he pointed out, stepping into the room.

Loki kept digging at the floor.

The steady 'chk chk chk' of stone against stone set Thor's nerves on edge. Loki was bleeding enough that he should have **some** care for it--and yet he only dug monotonously at the ground, as if he didn't feel the injury and hadn't heard him speak. As if he didn't recognize Thor was there.

Thor thought again, uncomfortably, of the magic saturating the temple now. Of the demon writhing at the bottom of the valley, suffocating in the flood of it.

He thought of the feverish look in Loki's eyes when the sorcerer had first broken through the doors and reached this room.

" **Loki** ," Thor said heavily, coming up behind him.

Loki still didn't acknowledge it. He continued to dig at the stone, even though the most basic instinct should have warned him a predator was at his back and he was in a poor position to defend himself.

Thor hauled him up from the floor.

Loki snarled and flailed, kicking at his legs. "Let me **go**!"

"You are **bleeding** , sorcerer," Thor repeated, tightening his grip. "Do you want to collapse again?"

" **Let me go**!"

"Apparently so," Thor muttered. He grunted when Loki drove an elbow into his side, and began dragging him from the room.

" **No**!" Loki shouted louder. His voice was cracking harshly--had he even drunk water before coming here? He hadn't bothered with the ties of his pants, only with wedging the stiff fabric on. Thor was growing surprised he'd done that much; the human habit must be ingrained. " _ **No**!_ "

The compulsion was weak and vague. Thor let the sorcerer go just long enough to force him around to face the door, and felt it slide away.

Loki threw himself against him, trying to jar loose of Thor's grip. But Thor could tell he was weakening. It was his leg that was bleeding--it smeared along Thor's own when Loki threw himself at him once more, heedless of his injury.

 _Rabid_ , Thor thought with a chill.

"Do you know what's **down there**?" Loki rasped, still trying to break loose and return to the cracked stonework.

"No," Thor said shortly. "Nor do I care. Stop fighting."

"Power," Loki said. Another chill brushed Thor at the awe in his voice. "Power to do **anything**."

"And how long could you wield it before it killed you?" he retorted, wresting him toward the door.

"What does that matter?" Loki replied.

This from the creature who ran himself to the bone just to live one more day out of his enemy's reach.

"You are even more mad than usual," Thor said flatly, and hefted Loki off the ground.

The half-demon spat and fought and clawed as Thor carried him out of the room--but it was he who was injured and had nearly died less than a week ago, not Thor.

Not that Loki seemed aware of it. When he almost squirmed free as Thor shouldered the door shut behind them--cracking his head against the stone wall in the process--Thor finally snarled and bit down hard on the back of his neck.

Loki jerked and cursed, but after Thor wrapped his arms around his chest once more the half-demon was pinned too close to get loose. Thor kept his teeth around Loki's spine and ignored the pain flaring up his own, and forced him up to his nest.

As soon as he pushed Loki through the doorway, the half-demon whirled around to face him, staggering on his bad limb, his lips peeled back from his teeth. "You **dare** \--!"

Thor punched him hard in his injured leg.

Loki crumpled to the ground with a yell, curling in around his bleeding thigh. Thor clenched his jaw against the stabbing pain that shot down the inside of his own in response, and went back and shut the rest of the doors. He carried back the staff only because he disliked the idea of letting it soak up any more of the temple's power.

Loki glared at him when he returned, teeth still bared; but some sanity seemed to have returned to him. At the least, he didn't try to attack again. He was still holding his bad leg.

"You are bleeding," Thor said a third time, tossing the staff in the corner. "Can you hear me now?"

"I heard you then," Loki snapped. "It will heal!"

"Only if you let it," Thor told him. "That power is going nowhere. Wait until you're healed before you go chasing things stronger than you."

Loki spit at him. "I'm well enough, demon. I've wasted too much time if it's already poured out this much. Get out of my way!"

"It can't spread past the valley. Or it won't," Thor replied. "Heal first."

Loki narrowed his eyes.

"...Show me," he demanded.

Thor studied him for a long moment. Loki only glared back, still trembling and still more mad than sane.

Finally, Thor exhaled.

He made Loki drink water first, until his voice no longer cracked so horribly when he spoke. The sorcerer refused to look to his leg until he had the proof he wasn't losing that power he craved, so Thor slung one of his arms over his shoulder and helped him limp to the lip of the mesa.

Loki breathed out quietly before they even reached the edge, and tried to break away to examine it. Thor refused to let him go, sure the sorcerer's leg would buckle and he'd pitch over the side into the valley below. He thought again of the demon from before, crushed under all that power.

"There," Thor said. "It's still here. Now do something about your leg, madman."

Loki continued to stare at the air above the valley for a long time, barely blinking.

But when Thor finally growled softly and tugged him back to the underground tunnel, he went.  
  
  
Loki was silent as Thor prised down his breeches and examined his leg, only staring distantly into the fire. He hissed occasionally if Thor prodded too near the wound.

Thor soon grew exasperated with the repetitious, constant warning pain in his hands as he rinsed it out. "Cease the spell, sorcerer," he grunted, pulling back and rubbing his palm where the ache was worst. "Or see to this yourself."

"Do you think me a fool?" Loki replied detachedly, still gazing at the burning tree.

"Obviously," Thor answered.

Loki glanced over and gave him an annoyed look. Thor lifted the corner of his mouth, half provoking him and half glad to see the man look something like himself again.

"Tch," Loki muttered, before carefully shifting his leg closer. Thor pushed the water jug into his reach.  
  
  
Loki soon gave up on cleaning his thigh and sank down to the ground instead. Thor checked that he had only fallen asleep before finishing with the wound. He worked the sorcerer's pants the rest of the way off so it could heal without chafing, and put him back on the pelts.

By now his hands and arms ached from too much abuse to hunt well. Thor caught a few small, easy prey just beyond the mesa, enough to moderately assuage his hunger, and paced his borders.

His neighbor had come right up to his territory in the past day, which was unusual. But he hadn't crossed the boundary; and it was by the small waterfall, so Thor assumed he was fishing. He and his former neighbor on this side had often spent mornings doing the same.

Thor stared at the stream, and reflected once again that the demon's killer was sleeping in his nest.

But soon, he forced out a breath and made himself shake the thought away.

He had chosen to give Loki shelter. To rescind it while the half-demon was still so badly wounded would mark him as merciless to the point of feral.

And his neighbor was unknown. If Loki staggered into its territory, the demon was as likely to kill him as shelter him. More than likely--Loki's scent would betray him as a half-breed and a sorcerer. No one who'd survived this deep into the demons' lands would be careless enough to let someone like that live if he crossed their territory.

At least, they shouldn't.

Thor huffed out a breath and resumed pacing his borders.  
  
  
He returned with another tree from the far northern mountain, and more water inside a mostly-whole jar he'd found in the ruins. Loki was still asleep.

Thor left the new tree outside the tunnel. He set the jar in the fire, then dropped in an armful of the bones and some scraps of meat he'd carried back.

He tried to remember if Darcy had described anything else when she'd attempted to teach him to make stew. Thor couldn't recall anything important, and settled into a crouch to watch the stock simmer.  
  
  
Loki stirred again later that evening. Thor heard his breathing change long before the half-demon finally rolled over enough to look at him.

". . . Are you cooking?" he asked at last.

It tasted more like strangely flavored water than what the humans had used for their stew, but drinking it hadn't made him ill. "Yes."

"Am I awake?" Loki said, bemused. He pushed himself cautiously to a sitting position.

"Yes," Thor repeated. He set down the bone he'd been gnawing. "Can you eat, or will you vomit?"

Loki touched his throat gingerly and then grimaced a few moments later as his stomach growled. "I'm willing to take the risk."

"I'm not," Thor said dryly; but he filled the cup-like pottery shard he'd retrieved from the ruins and held it out.

Loki narrowed his eyes for a breath before forcing his distrustful expression behind a blank mask, and took the shard. Thor noted it.

The half-demon hissed at the heat and nearly spilled the stock on himself. He left the shard on the ground to cool as he went outside; Thor returned to the bone.

After Loki had returned and cleaned his hands, he tried the stock again. He made a face at the taste that Thor ignored, but he slowly drank it and then more cupfuls until he'd emptied the jar.

When Thor cracked the bone open, he picked out some of the marrow and offered it over. Loki couldn't manage more than a bite before gagging, so Thor shook his head and took it back.

Loki gave him another narrow look as Thor licked the marrow from his claws.

"I'm not going to waste it on you if you'll only throw it up later," Thor replied.

"What is this?" Loki said flatly.

Thor studied him as he finished licking the marrow away. Loki's jaw tightened further.

The sorcerer looked away a few breaths of silence later, glaring at his clothes and belt and staff in the corner.

"Did my bag make it?" he demanded.

Thor shook his head. Loki grunted in frustration, then pushed himself carefully to his feet and limped over to the corner.

He watched Loki once again struggle into his pants before settling next to the pile to sort through it. Thor wondered whether the half-demon was playing up his weakness as a trap, or if he just hadn't considered the implications of it.

Likely the latter, given his look before.

"Where's my circlet?" Loki asked, shifting around the boots and belts with a frown.

"You didn't have it," Thor answered. "Your torque's gone too."

Loki huffed out a far more aggravated noise. Thor lifted the corner of his mouth with a chuckle. "Vain thing."

"They were rewards," Loki answered, piqued. "I'm still proud of that spell."

Thor shrugged a shoulder. "You have the rest of your things."

"Hmph." Loki muttered something else, and then pulled his boots and vambraces free of the pile. He set the staff upright against the wall before dragging the water jug over.

Thor ate more marrow as Loki scrubbed at the dried blood on his clothes, and let him be even when it was clear Loki was stubbornly draining what energy the food had returned. Thor listened as his breathing grew wearier and watched Loki force himself to keep picking at a patch of dried blood with a clenched jaw, and noted once more just how much the half-demon could endure.

Loki was no longer as pallid with blood loss as he'd been four days ago, but he was still pale enough that the demon markings on his torso and shoulders were visible in the firelight. The wound along his throat had healed and was slowly fading to match the older cuts on his chest, but Thor had noticed the one on his leg remained reddened and thickly scarred. The bluish tint on the inside of his palm was vivid even in the flickering light.

"What is this?" Loki repeated at last, his voice almost steady enough to conceal his wariness.

"I could ask you the same," Thor pointed out. "Why did you let someone come close enough to reach your throat?"

"Don't play games with me, demon," Loki snapped. "You weren't summoned. I barely used you at all." He made a sharp gesture, showing his still-marked palm. "I didn't **ask** your aid. Why is this still here? What trick are you trying?"

"None," Thor answered.

Loki sneered in response, the shaking anger in him starting to spill over. "You may wield a place like this, but you're a piss-poor liar. _Stop twisting my spell, Thor!_ "

Thor growled as he felt the compulsion crawl into his blood and seethe there.

It wound through him, making him shudder as it coursed along his blood. And then it coiled hot in his chest for several heartbeats before finally slithering back out, inactive.

Thor shuddered hard again. Loki's eyes widened.

"What--?" he hissed, scooting away. Loki staggered to a crouch and jerked his head around to stare at the hammer, eyes still wide.

Thor bared his teeth as he shook the sensation off. But he forced himself to cease the threat as he rubbed his tingling shoulder. He'd guessed this much.

"You don't understand what you've done," he answered, pulling his hand from his shoulder before it began to look too much like weakness. The half-demon was underhanded; he required caution. Loki twisted to glare at him.

"Enlighten me," he retorted with a sharp grin. Thor could hear the way his heart was thudding harder now, could scent the growing tinge of panic in his sweat.

"You entered my nest wounded," Thor said slowly. Loki tensed. "Dying. Defenseless. You came here needing shelter, water, food, protection. You asked for my leniency, Loki, and I gave it."

Thor kept a close eye on him as he explained the obvious. "The balance between us is uneven because of that, regardless of how you used your spell."

Loki was still as he glared back; but the panic inside him was worsening, fed now by returned rage.

He finally contrived another teeth-bearing grin and curled his hand into a fist, concealing the blue tint. "Unfortunately for you, beast, I'm not tied to your absurd customs. I will leave when I choose. _You will not stop me_."

Thor pulled his lips back from his gums again as the compulsion slid in, settling dormant beneath his skin. He saw Loki fight down a shudder as the spell ate at his reserves.

"You are bound by the same rules as the rest of us, half-breed," Thor replied lowly. "You came into my nest with nothing to barter but yourself. You made your choice."

Loki forced another sneer, and glanced briefly to his staff. "You think you can chain me to your company, demon? You'll have to look elsewhere for a slave. I am leaving."

Thor just gave him a level look. "You are not." Not as he was, lame and fatigued. He had to comprehend that much.

Loki twisted his sneer further. "Did you enjoy my presence so much before, beast? I'd think you'd prefer to be spared another round." He shifted unconsciously as the prolonged crouch began to harm his leg. "I am **leaving**. I did not miss your company and will not keep it when you aren't being useful to me."

A second reference to companionship. It was like talking to a whelp. Or to a demon who'd been so twisted in a magician's service that it had forgotten everything about being a demon.

"Do you misunderstand on purpose?" Thor asked. "Mates are partners. You are kept meat."

Loki stared at him in silence.

Thor didn't look away. Loki was trembling, teeth bared and eyes narrowed in hatred. The panic in his sweat had sharpened to the sour bite of fear. He knew just as well as Thor how injured and worn he was--and Thor was blocking the path to the storage room.

Loki tensed a few rapid heartbeats later, the expression in his eyes shifting as he glared; and Thor realized the half-demon was going to make this very hard on himself.

Loki seized the knife hidden among the clothes he'd scattered and sprang out of his crouch, throwing himself at Thor. But he was slow, and lopsided. He favored his injured leg too much.

Thor shoved himself back and lashed out with his tail, slamming it into Loki's ribs and sending him sprawling to the ground. Loki shouted and dropped the knife as he hit the stone hard, jarring his leg. He was fumbling for the blade as Thor sprung at him.

Loki attempted to roll and kick him off, but his leg didn't move as he needed--he jerked sharply with a pained cry as the smell of blood grew sharper. Thor planted a leg heavily across Loki's stomach to pin him, but Loki thrashed against it and tried to stab him in the eye.

Thor jerked back and caught his next strike in the curve of his horn, knocking the blade away into the fire. Loki snarled under him, a rasping noise of panic and rage, and went for his eyes with his bare hands. When Thor pulled up, Loki managed to buck hard enough to throw him off.

He didn't gain enough for it to be worth the cost. Thor caught him before Loki could reach his staff, wresting him away and grappling him back to the ground. Loki fought, but it was weaker now.

The half-demon was anemic with blood loss, in pain, already sapped from his original wounds and a lack of food and the use of too much magic used too soon. He was weary.

But he fought as viciously as he could despite it, head-butting Thor hard enough he bit his tongue. Thor growled and spat out blood but held on regardless. The half-demon was wearing himself out faster by struggling; Thor only had to pin him until Loki exhausted himself. As long as most of his injuries were self-inflicted, the spell's effect on Thor was endurable. He only had to hold Loki down, and wait.

Then the half-demon ripped one of his earrings out with his teeth, and Thor forgot that plan.

He wrenched backward with a roar. Loki spat the earring to the side and tried to scrabble loose.

Thor wrapped his tail around Loki's knee before he could get far, and yanked him back. When Loki clawed at his tail, Thor struck him hard across the face.

Loki crashed to the ground again with a harsh shout, his head cracking audibly on the stone when it hit. He curled in, gripping his skull as he made a thick whine in the back of his throat.

Thor snarled at the searing pain that streaked through his jaw and spine, but he swallowed it down and growled out a breath through his teeth. When it looked like Loki was too disoriented to attack again immediately, Thor shook out his hand and touched his ear.

The tear was ragged and the pain sharp, but it didn't feel like Loki had ripped out a significant amount of flesh. It should be knitted back together by morning, with the speed the temple's power healed him at now. He could set the earring back after that.

He glared down at Loki.

The unscrupulous, cheating half-breed was still curled in on himself, clutching his head and rasping for air, chest heaving as he forced breath into his lungs. His pants were tacky with grit and fresh blood. The side of his face was already bruising.

Loki recovered somewhat a few heartbeats later. The half-demon began to struggle again, trying to prise his leg loose of Thor's tail.

Thor tightened it around Loki's knee and grabbed his wrists, pinning them to the ground. Loki kicked him with his free leg, then gasped in pain as it tore his wound wider. He finally fell still at that, breathing harshly through a tight grimace.

Thor jerked his head, trying to shake away the trickle of blood running from his ear. "You made this harder than it needed to be, half-breed."

Loki snarled feebly, eyes fluttering open in an effort to glare at him through the haze of pain.

Thor growled back harsher. " **Ingrate**."

"Did not **ask** ," Loki rasped down another breath, "help."

"You only think in terms of words," Thor said tersely. He pulled his tail away and leaned up enough to roll the half-demon over onto his belly, taking a care Loki didn't deserve to avoid scraping his wounded leg against the ground.

Loki jerked at the action anyway, and tried to drag himself free. Thor caught the back of his neck in his teeth with a warning growl.

Loki jerked harder against him with a choked sound. "Let **go**!"

Thor braced an arm heavily down on his shoulder blades, and wrapped his tail back around Loki's good leg for extra measure--the half-demon had no damn instinct for when to yield. Loki thrashed once more, and then made a confused noise when Thor shifted against him to shove the edge of his loincloth into his belt. "You...? -- **No**!"

Thor bit down harder until he broke skin, then gagged as the blood burned its way down his throat. He let go and pulled back, leaning his weight heavier on Loki's shoulders as he gripped his cock and began to stroke so it would rise.

"You chose to attack, ingrate," Thor said raggedly, aggrieved at how the way the fight had winded and pained him too showed in his voice. "You chose to make this harder than it had to be. You **will** take the consequences of your actions for once."

Loki shuddered hard, nails scraping the rock as he curled his hands into fists. "No. Don't dare--" and Thor bit his spine again.

The half-demon cursed and tried to break loose once more; but it was clear to them both he was finished. Loki quaked again before forcing a slurred laugh.

"Do you **like** pain, demon?" he derided. "Take me like this, will be unpleasant for you too."

Thor released him with a frustrated noise, impatient at how incredibly little the man understood. "This isn't about pleasure, half-breed," he said sharply. "It's about teaching you your **place**."

Loki made a low, apprehensive whine involuntarily in the back of his throat.

He swallowed it down a hoarse breath later with another noise that didn't manage to be a laugh. "So this's demonic 'mercy'? Was better off with humans."

It had been a waste of effort, protecting Loki's wounded leg from further injury after he'd clearly lost. The half-breed understood **nothing**.

Thor scowled down at Loki's shaking form, and genuinely considered dragging him to the edge of his territory and throwing him over the border. He would finally cease to be insulting his former neighbors by letting their killer breathe so close to their graves if he did. He would not be marked out for rescinding shelter from a demon that had revealed itself so feral.

. . . But he had known that about Loki before taking him in.

And it wasn't as though the half-breed had forgotten how to be a demon. It seemed more that he'd never been taught in the first place.

It really was like explaining things to an orphaned whelp.

Thor pulled his hand away from his cock and braced his fists on the stone beside Loki's head with a long, exhausted growl. The sorcerer tensed further beneath him.

"You are using the wrong words," Thor muttered at last. Loki stiffened more.

"You're given 'mercy' after a fight if I let you live to crawl away and lick your wounds," Thor told him shortly. "And you rejected any obligation of that when you attacked like a rabid beast, instead of issuing a proper challenge. What you **want** to be given is 'leniency.'"

Loki tilted his head, giving Thor a wary look through the hair stuck to his face. His eyes were glassy. Thor waited.

". . . That is?" he croaked at last. His words were still slurring.

"A minimum of pain," Thor answered, speaking slower. "A chance to barter."

Loki made a low, cynical noise, the sound harsh in his raw throat. "Said I'd nothing to barter, demon."

"I said you had your life," Thor answered, pushing to his feet. "That isn't 'nothing.'"

Loki dragged himself to a half-sitting position, shifting away as Thor retrieved the water jar. Thor caught his ankle with his tail before the half-demon could squirm back further, and crouched to prise off his pants and begin cleaning his bad leg.

Loki hissed and clenched his fists as Thor rinsed the blood away and picked out the grit that had gotten inside to the wound, growling himself at the pain that returned yet again to his hands and arms as he did so.

"Cease the spell already, sorcerer," he demanded. "Or see to this yourself."

Loki twisted the corner of his mouth up. "And have you bite my throat out? No, demon."

Thor growled again and threw the last pebble along the corridor. "I told you you are in shelter now."

Loki bared his teeth again. "Meat is only for eating."

"That is not what it--" Thor pressed a hand to his face, and then rubbed it in exasperation.

"This is impossible," he muttered. "Were you abandoned in the human world at birth? How can you know so little?"

Loki was silent.

When Thor looked over a few breaths later, the half-demon was glaring to the side, his jaw clenched tight.

Thor studied him for several moments, and then grunted and returned to cleaning the wound.

Loki was tense and stiff under his touch as Thor licked away what blood the water hadn't rinsed off, but he didn't fight or speak. He started to hiss when Thor caught his head in his hands, but cut off when Thor tightened his claws against his scalp in warning. He flinched when Thor forced his eyelids open wider.

The half-demon's pupils were both the same size, despite his slurring and slowness. Thor released him.

Once he was free Loki staggered back to his pelts, though Thor couldn't tell whether it was caused more by his leg or by dizziness. He huddled against the wall and glared at him.

Thor picked up another bone and began gnawing it open, and waited.

Loki soon passed out despite himself, slumping against the wall. Thor pushed him down on the pelts and stretched out his leg so it wouldn't knot up as it healed, and then used the bone to fish Loki's knife out of the fire. He dropped it in the water to cool it before tucking it into his belt, and made his way out of the tunnel.

Thor collected enough boulders to blockade each of the doors between his new nest and the storage room, and did so. The half-demon didn't wake, despite the noise.

He dropped Loki's knife in the hall past the first door before wedging the slab against it. But he kept the staff, still leery of allowing it to interact with the temple's magic out of sight.

He almost broke it in half so the sorcerer couldn't use it against him.

But the idea of doing so while Loki was asleep and unable to react sat poorly with him. It felt too much like what the sorcerer had done to him back in the hut, healing his wounds while he was in forced unconsciousness. Or like what the hammer had done more recently.

The reasons might have been different, but Thor had still hated being changed without his knowledge. The staff was clearly intertwined with Loki; breaking it in cold blood sat poorly with him.

So instead Thor climbed one of the ruins' walls and wedged it high in a crevice. Then he finally returned and curled up in his nest, and fell into a weary sleep.  
  
  
It was still night when he woke at the sound of the half-demon padding toward him.

Thor continued pretending sleep, but slitted his eyes open to watch Loki approach. He had apparently healed some from the head blow: he'd bothered to redress, and while he was moving cautiously it looked like he was slinking up to Thor in careful steps rather than trying to counter disorientation. If Thor weren't still so jumpy with the change in his nest's location, and Loki weren't forced to distribute his weight unevenly to counter for his leg, he might have slept through it.

Loki was carrying something in his hand. It was too short to be his staff, too long to be the knife Thor had locked away from him.

Finally Loki came close enough to kneel a leg beside him, not carefully enough--the pelts beneath Thor shifted faintly under his weight. The object in his hand was a bone, cracked open and brittlely sharp at one end. It was a terrible weapon.

Especially since the half-demon had put himself between Thor and the hammer.

Loki set the sharp end of the bone to his throat. "Wake, demon."

"I am awake," Thor replied evenly. Loki jolted and then tensed. "And you called me a slow learner."

He watched Loki frown in confusion before narrowing his eyes. He didn't lift the makeshift blade away. "...Why let me get so close?"

Thor had discovered once while hunting that the hammer would fly to his grip if he wanted it to strongly enough. It was too much like wielding magic for his tastes, and he'd only attempted it a few more times to ensure it wasn't a fluke. But the option remained. And it moved faster than the half-demon possibly could.

Thor shrugged a shoulder and opened his eyes further, watching Loki's face. "Curiosity."

Loki muttered something rude under his breath. His expression was still wary.

If he kept the makeshift blade to Thor's throat much longer he would have to commit to the attack. Thor had already decided it would end worse for him this time; the half-demon knew the consequences now. He'd been warned. Whelps either grew up or died.

Loki finally hissed out a long, angry breath, and drew the sharpened bone away from his throat. Thor smacked it out of his hand with his tail.

Loki cursed and tried to spot where it had sailed in the gloom, but the fire was burning low. He soon gave up and looked back at Thor.

Loki rubbed his fingers and scowled as he demanded, "What do you **want**?"

"Not to be attacked in my sleep, sorcerer," Thor said flatly. "Surely someone has **described** decency to you."

"I don't want to be lectured on morals by a demon," Loki muttered. " _Tell me what you desire to consider the balance between us even, Thor._ "

He shuddered brutally as he forced the spell out. Thor ignored the mild feel of the compulsion as it slid through the scar in his shoulder, and propped himself up on an arm to study the sorcerer.

"You know what you do is unwise," he said. "Why do you do it anyway?"

"Just answer," Loki snapped.

"And if you don't like what you learn?" Thor pointed out.

Loki's shoulders were tense as he glared. "I didn't promise to grant it," he retorted. "I said to **tell me** it."

"Mm," Thor replied. Loki bared his teeth.

" _ **Speak**_ ," he demanded, when Thor remained silently watching him.

"I want many things from you," he answered, because it was true. He wanted the half-breed to start showing some damned instinct and self-preservation. He wanted another fight when Loki wasn't so disadvantaged from the start, to see just how much tenacity and endurance he truly had. He wanted to overpower those and roll Loki into his nest after the insolent little upstart finally made himself yield, and he wanted to enjoy him far more thoroughly than he had the last time. Loki could bite again if he wished; Thor would just see how long he could endure the consequences of that, too. "None you are capable of yet. Your injuries are known, half-demon. Stop making them worse trying to conceal them."

A muscle jumped in Loki's throat as he tightened his jaw. Thor watched it with mild hunger. "I am fine."

"Liar."

"What will make the balance even?!" Loki demanded.

"You can't," Thor answered. "Not the way you are trying, sorcerer. This is not one of your spells where one act reciprocates another."

Loki narrowed his eyes suspiciously the way he always did at Thor's mention of obvious things about magic. "Then explain it."

"Do you need everything put in words?" Thor asked in annoyance.

But he tucked an arm beneath his head, shifting his tail slightly to counter for it. "You came here incapable of surviving on your own," Thor enunciated. "Especially in this place. We are not on the outskirts, half-demon. If I'd tossed you back out, an animal would have gotten you before you woke. If you somehow escaped that but crossed into my neighbor's territory, they could have killed you.

"You were helpless," Thor told him. "A burden on top of a known threat. But I agreed to loan you shelter and see that you healed. You cannot repay an imbalance that great so easily."

Loki grit his jaw again. "I did not **ask** your help."

Thor thumped his tail hard. "You came into my nest bleeding to death from a fight you lost. You asked. Words weren't necessary."

Loki exhaled slowly through his teeth, glaring at him. Thor stared back, holding the challenge.

"...'Loan,'" the man said at last, glancing aside for a breath. "So it **does** end."

Thor frowned at the wariness in his voice.

Then he wondered abruptly if Loki would have picked such an unwise fight if he'd realized this was temporary. Thor had assumed the man understood that much--but if not, it explained things.

To be kept in shelter permanently, forever another demon's meat, would be unbearable. If **that** was what Loki had been afraid of, Thor couldn't grudge him trying to escape.

"Yes," he agreed. "When you are better and I rescind the shelter, you have to leave. Or you could run before then, if you think you can sneak through the neighbor's territory and that I won't care enough to follow. Those are the main ways."

Loki made a quiet noise and gave him a considering look. "That's unexpectedly helpful information."

"If I hadn't told you freely you would've tried to compel it," Thor said flatly. "And you cannot afford to do that again, sorcerer. Cease making your injuries worse."

Loki quirked the corner of his mouth for a few breaths; but like all his smiles, it soon slid away.

"So if I am obligated to be your 'meat,'" he said, tone deliberate, "what are you bound to in return?"

"While you stay? Not to let whatever tried to kill you have you back," Thor answered. "Not to kill you myself. Not to send you out until you're well enough to survive on your own, regardless of the trouble. Unless you turn out to be feral or rabid."

Loki shifted in his crouch, studying him.

"You may feel unfairly bound by this, half-demon," Thor said evenly, "but I am burdened too. You cannot repay this kind of imbalance so easily."

Loki kept frowning, still wary. "Is that all you're proscribed against?"

"Yes," he replied. "As long as you aren't killed, given over, or driven out, everything else depends on the protector's leniency."

"Which brings us to the most important question," Loki murmured, still staring at him. "Why didn't you leave me to die?"

Thor flicked the tip of his tail in agitation. "...Because you needed the aid."

"So?"

Thor examined him for a long time, watching the sincere and distrustful confusion on Loki's face in the murky light.

"I don't know how to explain obligation to you, half-breed," he finally answered, "if you don't have the soul to understand it."

Loki sneered. "I don't need to hear that from you."

"You don't want to hear many things about demons from a demon," Thor replied, still watching him. "So who **did** you learn about us from?"

Loki hissed and left him.  
  
  
When the half-demon's presence woke him again, the tunnel was dark and Thor was growing aggravated with the interrupted sleep. He growled in warning before Loki reached his nest.

Loki paused where he was.

"The fire died," he said soon. "Go fetch more tinder."

Thor gave him a considering look. The half-demon was wrapped in the largest pelt Thor'd loaned him, and his stance was still lopsided, favoring his bad leg. He was standing rigidly to hide it, but Thor could see the tremor of fever chills running through him. The fact that he kept waking from sleep was no better a sign than when he'd slept heavily without rousing, even if he was speaking clearer now.

"You've forgotten how my lands are," Thor said dryly, because he didn't feel like dragging the new tree into the tunnel right now. And the last thing the sorcerer needed to be doing was another spell to create a flame. He shifted aside to make more room in the nest. "Come here."

"They're sparse, not empty," Loki retorted, unmoving. "You ruined my clothes. Tinder, demon."

"You are the one who spilled blood all over them," Thor said. "I'll get it in the morning. Your other match is useless, anyway."

"I don't need it."

"No, Loki," he replied. "Lay here and be warm, or go back and stay cold."

Loki growled deep in his throat, the first time that Thor had heard such a guttural noise from him. He flicked the tip of his tail in interest.

Then Loki turned and started limping back to his pelts.

Thor exhaled in exasperation and caught his good leg with his tail. He wrested the man down into the nest while Loki cursed at him.

Thor draped himself heavily over Loki's back to hold him in place. "You are impossible, half-breed."

"Do you think this is believable, beast?" Loki spat, shaking with tension beneath him. The fact that he wasn't kicking made Thor wonder about his leg. "Cease the ridiculous pretenses at hospitality."

"You weren't raised among demons," Thor said flatly. "So stop quoting whoever's told you lies about us."

Loki went still with an angry breath.

Thor kept a wary eye on him. But Loki said nothing else, and he didn't resume struggling.

Eventually, Thor lifted himself up to check his leg. Loki curled a fist in the pelt beside his head, but remained as he was.

His flesh didn't smell gangrenous, and the scabs weren't bleeding again. But the wound was still sore; Loki hissed and the spell gave him a sharp warning spasm even though Thor touched it gently.

He draped a pelt over Loki's lower legs, careful to avoid his hip and thigh. Then he settled himself more comfortably on Loki's back, ignoring how the half-demon grunted when his weight pressed Loki harder against the furs. Thor tugged more pelts over them both before curling in slightly, settling.

Loki's chills slowly faded in the growing warmth. It took him much longer to fall asleep; but eventually he did.  
  
  
Loki was still asleep when he woke that morning. Thor forced him awake long enough to check his pupils once more, and then left him in the nest and went hunting.

He returned in the afternoon, carefully dragging the carcass of a younger bear he'd spent most of the morning tracking and fighting across the stone bridge, frowning when he caught Loki's scent on the stone. He growled low in annoyance when he saw that the rubble around the mouth of the underground tunnel had been shifted further aside and the tree was gone.

He left the bear and went to check the wall he'd wedged the sorcerer's staff into. Loki's scent was on the stones there too, and there was a thin trace of blood smeared near the first handhold up, as though he'd tested whether he could climb it. But there was nothing higher, and the staff remained where Thor had put it.

"You are **stubborn** , half-breed," Thor said as he hauled the bear into the tunnel. He let it fall to the ground with a thud and glared at Loki. The sorcerer was sitting by a new fire near the entrance, scraping dried blood off one of his belts. There was a sheen of fever-sweat on his skin.

"You said you would fetch tinder in the morning, and you did not, oath-breaker," Loki replied neutrally. "So the task was left to me. Like usual."

Thor had started to recall on his sleepy promise during the night, but he scowled at that. "What part of cease making your injuries worse is so impossible to understand, sorcerer?"

"My neck is fine," Loki said. "My leg is better."

His voice was still off. Thor frowned and loped around to look at his wound.

It **had** improved. The scabbing had mostly turned to scarring, save where it had clearly reopened earlier. But it wasn't as healed as Thor expected, given how much time had passed and how much swifter the man had recovered before.

"Why is it taking so long?" he asked. "Because I cut it open again?"

"What?" Loki replied.

"It was healing badly," Thor said, pointing at the long scabrous scar. "I cut it to get out the pus and cloth inside. Is that why it's taking longer than the others?"

Loki looked at him for a long moment.

"It shouldn't be," he said at last. "How bad was it?"

"You were losing it," Thor answered.

Loki muttered an insult under his breath. "That bastard."

He tilted his head at the burning tree a moment later. "Try breaking that in thirds," he said. "Then it won't go so quickly."

Thor gave him a look for the subject change, but loosened the hammer from his belt and set to it. Loki moved to the opposite wall to avoid the splinters.  
  
  
Loki had ventured far enough from the temple to refill the good jar with water.

He was soaking ashes in the other, and the water inside smelled caustic and unpleasant when Thor sniffed it. Loki snorted when he moved it to the mouth of the tunnel so the wind would carry the reek away, and told him not to spill the lye.

He made Thor retrieve his knife from behind the first door so he could clean the bear, and then sent him to scour the temple for more pottery pieces. Loki broke off in the middle of skinning when Thor returned and started rummaging through them.

"It can wait, half-demon," Thor groused, stretching out by the fire so the heat would soak into his sore muscles. "I'm hungry."

"You could just eat it as you normally would," Loki pointed out, eying the bottom half of a jug.

"Or you could make yourself useful and finish," Thor replied.

"Subtle," Loki muttered. But after a few more prods at the pottery, he set the jug aside and returned to the bear.

When he was finished, Thor dragged the pelt to the stream to wash it. It wasn't the largest bear he'd taken down before, but normally he'd hunted those with his former neighbors.

By the time he'd shaken the pelt out and lugged it back, Loki had gutted the bear and begun cutting loose the best meat.

Thor frowned when he saw the half-demon was cutting away the fat too as he worked. Several strips were already laying in the jug beside him.

"Stop it," he said, picking up one of the pieces. "That's a good part."

Loki pulled the jug out of his reach with a scowl. "I need it for the soap."

Thor made another face and ate the fat. "Then ruin **your** half," he replied. "You're already going to spoil it by shoving it in the fire."

"I can't eat raw meat," Loki said shortly. "I don't like how it tastes cooked, but otherwise it makes me ill."

Thor looked at him as he licked his claws. "None?"

"...Fish, sometimes," the half-demon replied. "If I'm hungry enough."

"That's a shame," Thor answered.

"Literally or metaphorically?" Loki drawled. When Thor gave him a questioning look, he snickered to himself.

Loki left his share alone after that, but he continued to cut the fat away from his own half of the carcass. Thor hung his new pelt over a broken pillar to dry and returned to the fire.

Loki began cooking parts of his share as he finished with them. Thor wrinkled his nose at the smell, no longer used to it since leaving the half-demon.

Loki barely cooked any of the meat before eating it, as always. The color had hardly changed before he tugged the strips back out of the fire. He made a face at the first one.

"I told you it was better with it," Thor replied. Loki just shook his head and forced himself to keep eating.  
  
  
Thor finished his meat long before Loki, and piled up several of the largest bones for later before dozing by the fire. He roused himself when Loki finally finished trimming loose the last of the fat.

"Your knife," Thor said, stretching.

"Yes, it **is** mine," Loki agreed.

Thor gave him a flat look. "Give it over."

Loki glanced at him from the corner of his eye as he pushed the jug bottom and another piece of pottery full of fat into the edge of the fire. "It's mine."

"If you wanted to keep it, you shouldn't have attacked me," Thor said. "Give it over."

Loki studied him for several long breaths, and then flipped the knife so the blade was between his fingers and threw it lazily at him.

Thor shifted to dodge it and growled a warning. Loki just turned to poking the melting fat with a bone.

Thor retrieved the blade and carried it back to the door, and thumped Loki in the side with his tail as he passed. The man cursed at him as the fat spattered onto his hand.  
  
  
Loki retreated again to his own place that evening.

Thor let him. He was full and drowsy and content enough for the night. And Loki had reopened his wound that morning. Thor wanted him healed first.  
  
  
He woke again during the night when he heard the half-demon approaching. The fire had died.

Loki stopped and stood at a distance from his nest, looking at him and then past to the mouth of the tunnel. The smell of melted fat still lingered around him and the pot he carried.

Thor thought vaguely of the lye jar he'd moved outside the tunnel entrance, and then he woke further and thought of the power roiling in the valley. He'd locked Loki away from the source, but there was still plenty of it out there to spur the sorcerer back into madness.

"Come here," Thor ordered, before Loki could decide which course to take.

The half-demon made a noise in the back of his throat, but surprisingly obeyed without argument. Thor shifted aside to give him a spot among the pelts.

"You're walking better," he remarked, as Loki crouched carefully to set the pot on the ground. When the man settled on his side away from him at the edge of the furs and pulled a pelt over his torso, Thor touched his leg by the knee. "Is it healed yet?"

"Well enough," Loki replied. The undercurrent in his scent was clear now that he was so close, a mingled tinge of trepidation and want. "It's sore, but it no longer aches."

"Your head?"

"Well enough," Loki repeated.

Thor hummed in consideration and poked at his leg lightly.

Loki hissed once when his claws came close to the scar, but Thor only felt a brief pinch of pain in the meat of his thumb. It was much better than it had once been. "Good."

He pulled his hand away and settled once more. "Why did it take so long, sorcerer?"

Loki was silent for a few breaths before saying flatly, "Are you sincere?"

"Now what?" Thor replied in annoyance.

"It took longer to heal because you kept the hammer near me," he said harshly. "Close enough that it could interfere. Why did you bother to clean it the first time just to do that? Do you like torturing your prey, demon?"

Thor propped himself up on an elbow to frown at him. "That should have helped you heal quicker," he argued. "It did me."

Loki finally looked over his shoulder at him, eyes narrowed in distrust. Thor scowled back.

"Cease accusing me of playing your games, sorcerer," he ordered. "It should have helped."

Loki stared at him for a long time before finally turning away again.

"Fool," he muttered. "It was never going to help me. It's still angry at me." He dragged another pelt over his legs. "I suppose it would have hindered worse if you hadn't been expecting it to do the opposite."

"Why do you talk about it like it's sentient?" Thor asked.

"Because it **is** ," Loki bit out. "Obviously. How can you control these things and not know that little?"

"It's a weapon," he replied, even as he remembered the way the hammer had hummed in irritation beneath his palm when he took it up after waking in Loki's hut. "All it takes to wield it is practice."

"Many things that are alive are weapons," Loki said lowly. "And you thought me impossible."

"Is that why you didn't move it away from you?" Thor asked. "You can't?"

Loki stiffened.

Thor flicked his tail as he watched the tension in the half-demon's shoulders. " **That's** what you meant in the hut that night. That's why you left it where I lay even after you moved me." He lashed his tail harder at the memory.

When Loki didn't answer, Thor gave him another considering look.

"Is it angry with you for that?" he asked. "Or because of what you did with those bearings?"

"The latter," Loki said shortly. "Don't be so pleased. I already told you it took to you. It just took deeper than I expected."

" **Why**?" Thor demanded.

If the hammer answered his summons or liked him but disliked his enemies, Thor didn't need to know the logic behind the magic. It was useful; that was enough.

But if the hammer had changed him so drastically that he could survive within a miasma of power that was clearly murderous, that was far more significant. **That** he wanted to understand.

"How could I know?" Loki retorted. "It barely lets me touch it now. It's not something of his. If you weren't born here, then a blood-claim through the land is the only explanation I have."

Thor pushed up higher with a heavier frown. "Something of whose?" he replied. "Did you know the humans that used to live here?"

Loki laughed once, and it almost sounded real. "I'm not **that** old, demon. Are you sure you weren't born here?" he pushed, brushing a length of Thor's hair off his shoulder where it had spilled. "That would make more sense than it just choosing to like you over another you'd killed."

Thor exhaled. "I was not. We lived further down. I had to fight my way up to this place."

"Hn," Loki murmured. ". . . Good."

"Something of **whose** , Loki?"

"No one you need concern yourself with," he replied, pulling the furs tighter around himself. "Let me sleep already, demon."

Thor scowled at him and finally thumped his tail hard. "Why would your enemy have left things here?" he quarreled. "You said he keeps to human-populated places."

Loki stayed still beneath the furs he was huddled under.

"He's the only one you refuse to talk about so adamantly," Thor herded. "Why would he have left anything here?"

"You asked if he'd fought demons before, and I told you yes," Loki replied in a low voice. "I have not been on all his travels. He could have left something behind while he was here for his own reasons. But that hammer is not his. Leave me be."

Thor grunted in annoyance. "What about that brooch you took? The one that turned bad."

"That wasn't something of his either," Loki answered; but there was an edge of hesitancy in his voice. "I wouldn't have taken it if it were."

"Then how did he find you there?"

Loki laughed again, bitterly this time. "If I knew **that** , demon, I'd be able to stop him doing it, wouldn't I?"

Thor made another annoyed noise, but the logic seemed sound. He dropped back onto the furs, curling his tail around himself.

Beside him, Loki drew a quiet breath. But even when Thor lifted his head again and waited, he said nothing else.  
  
  
Loki remained tense for a long while, so Thor didn't let himself fall asleep. But he had begun to doze lightly by the time Loki finally spoke again: "How long are you going to drag this out?"

Thor shook awake and propped himself back up on an elbow.

Loki was still curled away from him, barricaded under pelts and staring at the opposite wall. That tint of want had returned to his scent, but this time the apprehension was thicker.

Thor wrinkled his nose and wondered what game he was playing now. Loki never seemed to recognize that he had challenged something stronger than himself until he was already losing, and even then the half-demon just goaded further rather than yield. Thor had never known a creature whose survival instincts were so poor. He had some empathy for Loki's enemy.

Loki hissed through his teeth when he didn't immediately respond. " _Answer, Thor!_ "

He tensed to hide the shudder that ran through him afterward. Thor noted that the compulsions were still eating at him more deeply than normal; he was still exacerbating his weaknesses by trying to conceal them.

"Do you really think yourself recovered, sorcerer?" Thor asked. Loki tensed more.

Thor settled his cheek on his fist and watched him. "If so, why not just run?"

Loki ground his teeth and thumped a fist on the furs. Thor didn't need to see his palm to know it was his marked hand. "Because this would remain."

"So?" Thor asked with curiosity. "You run from everything. Why does it matter this time?" He lifted the corner of his mouth. "You can't be so vain that the color is unbearable."

Loki growled low but still didn't face him. "It is **my** spell being twisted around for **your** purposes."

Thor laughed outright this time. "So it's well for you to steal others' spells and lives, but you can't endure having the same done to yourself?"

"No," Loki said coldly. "I said answer, Thor. Or are you telling me I can run and not be chased?"

Thor shivered briefly and stared at Loki's nape as he thought of it.

His territory was large, and Loki would still move gingerly on his leg for another day. He might leave his belts and vambraces behind to gain speed and silence, but he would take his boots and pants and staff for certain.

The pants were stiff with dried blood and would reduce his speed. The staff would be an unwieldy weight slowing him further, and retrieving it would add to the strain on his leg. He didn't know the land as Thor did; he would have to move cautiously to avoid pitfalls and predators attracted to the blood. Thor would catch him before he crossed the border.

If Loki were recovered enough, Thor might even get the challenge he wanted first. He knew now it would be a hard fight, given how fiercely the half-demon had attacked while still injured. He would get to truly see just how ferocious and reckless Loki turned when cornered. When Thor finally wore him down and forced him to yield, he would **know** his victory was well-earned.

As long as nothing in the half-demon was broken, Thor wouldn't even give him a respite before taking him. If Loki submitted of his own volition, if he made his arrogant tongue ask leniency and showed his belly of his own will, Thor would grant it. But he doubted Loki's pride would endure the easier path.

More likely, Loki would keep cursing and sneering at him for as long as he had the breath to do so, until Thor had finally fucked it all out of him and the only thing the ungrateful, over-confident little half-demon could still do was groan raggedly and claw at Thor's arms as he was reminded who currently held his life.

Loki's limbs and chest would scraped raw from the rocks by the time Thor was finished with him. If he couldn't manage to limp back to the nest, Thor would carry him. He would clean out Loki's abrasions so the temple would heal them properly, and then he would push him down on the pelts and take him again, until he'd left Loki too hoarse to insult and too worn to come another time. **Then** Thor would allow him to rest--at least until he'd hunted enough food for them both through the next day, and had regained more energy. The little half-demon wouldn't think of running again after he had to be hand-fed because he couldn't even crawl from their nest.

Loki made a low, shaky noise in the back of his throat and curled in more.

Thor shook his head, cutting off his thick, pleased growl and clearing away the last thought. It was **his** nest. Loki wasn't a mate. Nothing of Thor's belonged to him too. He only had what Thor chose to share until he sent the man back out.

"I would chase you," he said heavily, sliding a hand into Loki's hair. Loki shuddered and stifled another noise as Thor skritched his scalp lightly. "You should avoid that consequence."

The smell of apprehension and hungry musk was so thick in Loki's scent now that Thor wanted to bury his face in his neck and bite down to make it spike higher, wanted to roll Loki beneath him and have him until the furs held the spoor of their sweat and saliva and seed. He had been patient; and the half-demon kept pushing.

Loki drew another unsteady breath.

"You still haven't answered, demon," he managed. Thor's cock stirred further at the way his breathing had sped up. "How long are you going to drag this out?"

He had been patient. Loki kept pushing. Thor tightened the grip in his hair and rumbled, "If you think you can bear it, little half-demon, then no longer."

Loki cursed as Thor dragged him over, feet skidding on the pelts as he scrabbled to move backward and relieve the ache in his scalp. Thor noted with pleasure that the spell barely prickled his own despite it, and kept his grip.

Loki gasped as Thor tugged him to his chest before pinning him down, pressing Loki tight between himself and the furs. He twisted the half-demon's head to the side to catch the tip of his ear in his teeth; Loki shivered against him as he began to worry it.

"Pity I don't wear earrings, hm?" he laughed hoarsely.

Thor growled in the back of his throat and pulled away, reminded abruptly that one of his earrings now sat lower in his ear, beneath the fresh scar tissue. Loki swallowed a quiet noise at the loss.

"You have no instincts, half-demon," Thor bit off, undoing his loincloth with his free hand as he boxed Loki's legs between his knees.

Loki curled his fists into the pelts with a shaky chuckle. He jerked when Thor tugged his hips up enough to curl his tail around the front of his thighs.

"Wait," Loki choked out, flailing a hand to the side. Thor glanced over and caught once more the scent of cooled, melted fat in the pot that Loki had brought with him. He frowned in surprise as he finally realized the half-demon's abnormal intent.

\--But he wouldn't turn down the offer. It had been a long time.

Loki let out a breath when Thor reached over him to snag the pot, and let his hand drop to the furs again. Thor tilted his head to study him as he coated his fingers with the grease.

Loki shifted as Thor shoved the pot away and began to slick his cock--not fighting, only trying to find a more comfortable position within the restraints of Thor's thighs and tail. His fingers were still digging into the furs. When Thor tugged one of Loki's hands loose and rubbed the remaining grease on his fingers so he could prepare himself, Loki shook his head sharply.

"It's done. Go on," he ordered tersely, pulling at his arm.

Thor frowned again in confusion. Then he blinked, and leaned back and stared.

He released Loki's arm, making the half-demon grunt as the sudden lack of resistance banged his wrist into the pelts. Thor pulled back enough to spread Loki's ass cheeks and press his nose between them.

Loki startled badly and swore in surprise, and then twisted harder against his hands with another curse when Thor swiped his tongue over his taint. Some of the grease Loki had used to prepare himself before coming to Thor was smeared there; Thor licked it away, and shivered heavily at Loki's smothered moan.

He kept his hands in place, holding Loki spread open for him, as he leaned up to bite the half-demon's ear. Loki panted harshly and tried to rock against him, and Thor tightened his grip.

"No wonder you smelled eager when you came to me," he growled. Thor nosed the thudding pulse behind Loki's ear as the half-demon shuddered and tried to push back again. "You should have said what you wanted at the start. Then your efforts wouldn't have gone to waste."

Thor smiled against his neck as he brushed the back of a claw over his hole. "Luckily, I promised to help you the next time."

Loki jolted violently with a choked gasp. Thor barely managed to curl his finger up in time to avoid cutting him. " **No**!"

Thor planted a palm between Loki's shoulder blades to pin him to the furs, and used his knees and tail to spread the half-demon's legs. "Be still," he ordered, "or it will hurt."

Another shudder wracked through Loki.

Thor only meant to tease, to see if he could draw a few full moans or a proper whine from the over-confident upstart. He didn't have the patience right now to open Loki as carefully as he'd need to, and he had better uses for his energy than expending it pinning him so Loki wouldn't end up squirming and injuring himself.

And making Loki allow Thor to prepare him was demanding too much for just a rutting. It pushed the already too-intimate offer the half-demon had made deep into the realm of mating.

Loki only reasonably had to let Thor have his thighs or palms or tongue. Forcing him to submit to anything that left him even more vulnerable than that, blatantly exposing how dependent Loki was on Thor's good mood and decency while he remained in his shelter, was cruel.

But Thor wouldn't turn down the offer. It had been a very long time; he was hungry.

He meant to tease for a little while. The sorcerer had wrenched him away from his lands for **weeks** , and then had shown up unwelcome and bled all over his nest while making insults and chasing after magic like a lunatic. It was only fair.

Yet when Thor traced the tip of his claw gently along the rim of Loki's asshole, in the middle of choosing a good taunt, Loki quaked and stifled a choked noise.

"Don't," he panted lowly, a few heartbeats later. "Leniency. Please."

Thor glanced up sharply. Loki's face was hidden behind the crook of his elbow and buried in the pelts, a hand fisted tight in his hair. He said nothing else.

If the sorcerer had tried to compel him, it would have angered him. But this....

Manipulative little beast. But at least he'd started listening.

Thor exhaled heavily through his teeth. "Very well," he grunted, pulling his hand away.

Loki shivered out a relieved laugh as Thor shifted behind him. He moved willingly with him when Thor dragged his hips higher; he made a low, greedy noise when Thor gripped his cock and pressed it to his hole.

Thor flattened a hand over Loki's back and frowned down at him, remembering how the last time that low burn had spread up his own spine in warning at first even though he'd been moving slowly and Loki had been well-opened for him. "If you need to be readied more, half-demon, say it now."

Loki shivered faintly again but jerked his head. "Go on."

"You are very strange," Thor mused, and pushed in.

Loki was tight around his cock despite the grease slicking them both. Thor had to press and force his way inside, and that intense, hot burn of too much pressure too fast crawled up his spine immediately. And yet Loki moaned again, far louder, as Thor drove in.

It was too contradictory to make sense of. Thor dropped his head to Loki's back with a disbelieving laugh.

He stayed pressed inside without moving at first, nipping at Loki's neck and shoulders until the half-demon was panting and the burn had faded to something ignorable. Loki groaned into the fur when Thor at last leaned up and dragged his cock back.

He laughed when he saw Loki had already wrapped a hand around his own prick. "You **were** starving among them."

Thor grunted as he set to a deep, slow pace, watching Loki shiver and listening to the way the half-demon rasped for breath as he rocked back to drive Thor harder into him. "How else could you enjoy this so much?"

"You say **I** use too many words," Loki mumbled. He shifted his weight, reaching over his shoulder to tangle his fingers in Thor's hair spilled along his back. Before Thor could shake it away, Loki caught a fistful and yanked.

Thor growled and bit his shoulder, but Loki only laughed breathlessly. He didn't let go.

Thor had given shelter to other demons during his life. He'd had to take it once himself too, when he was younger and had broken his leg so badly in an unwise challenge that he'd barely managed to cross out of the winner's territory. After a certain point it had ceased to be a part of his life: surviving after losing a fight was the option of those around the outskirts.

But the demons he'd taken in had been nothing like Loki. They'd been grateful for the protection. They hadn't argued or made their wounds worse while they healed, hadn't dared fight with him while bleeding in his own damned nest. They did what chores they were given, submitted for sex once they were able, were grateful again when he didn't hurt them during it. They left when they were told; they didn't have to run early to escape abuse.

And rutting with them had felt just like that. They hadn't climbed into his nest before he brought them in or mouthed off once they were there. They hadn't groaned and panted and moved with him as Loki did now, trembling with want. Thor hadn't made it unpleasant; but there was a difference between rutting and mating. They knew that. He knew that. Everyone knew that.

Everyone except the arrogant, magic-using, reckless, near-feral, upstart little half-demon.

His entire life had been upside down since Loki tricked his way into it. Things that were once clear-cut and made sense had bled through and blurred, had become tangled up in Loki's own way of seeing things, until somehow Thor could enjoy the company of such a treacherous half-breed that he let him live despite the spells Loki had put on him and the graves of his former neighbors lying nearby.

Maybe it wasn't the hammer that had changed him. Maybe he'd just changed himself.

When Loki still wouldn't release his hair after a deeper bite, Thor growled and grabbed his wrist, wrenching his hand away. Loki took hair with him.

Thor snarled and pinned his forearm to the pelt, and then yanked Loki's other hand from his cock. Loki cursed gutturally, bucking beneath him but unable to throw his weight off as Thor bore down further to keep him pinned.

"Why do you keep doing things you know are unwise, half-demon?!" Thor hissed.

" **Wisdom** ," Loki laughed, his mouth twisted in a sneer. "Worthless. Just makes you a miserable bastard. Makes you afraid of change. I'll never accept **it**."

He shoved back fiercely against Thor, a harsh noise ripping from his throat as Thor snapped his hips instinctively to meet him. Loki sucked in more air and snarled, " **Move** , Thor!"

Thor growled deep in his chest and pressed his weight down harder, until Loki gasped for breath. He shifted his hold on Loki's forearms just enough to grip onto the fur beneath them, and kicked away more pelts until he could dig his claws into the rock below; and then he obliged the little ingrate.

Loki struggled under him frantically as Thor drove into him hard enough to skid the pelts beneath them, writhing and yowling and kicking as Thor used his leverage against the rock to wrench Loki back to him again and again. One slam made Loki arch taut beneath him with a high keen, and Thor shuddered hard and had to bite the inside of his cheek until it bled to rein himself in.

"You are too proud for your own good, half-breed," he rasped as he swallowed down the blood. "You let it blind your instincts. Mire you deeper in trouble."

Loki snarled. "You think you're the first to try and **tame** me?" he spat. "I **won't be**." He twisted in Thor's grip and sank his teeth into his arm.

Thor cursed in pain and drove into him harder in response. Loki hung on, biting deeper even as the edge of Thor's bracer cracked into his jaw.

Thor had to take it until he could drag the half-demon's arms up enough to pin them with one hand, so he could fist the other in Loki's hair and wrench him loose. He lost the leverage he'd had before, no longer able to keep Loki held if he continued to take him so roughly--which the half-demon should have been grateful for, if he were sane. Loki had taken flesh from his arm when he'd been yanked back, and part of Thor was ready to throw away his obligation and rend the ungrateful little beast in half until he **learned**.

"Being tamed and having sense are not the same thing," Thor gritted out, twisting his fist in Loki's hair to force his head to the side and scowling down at him. Loki closed his eyes and clenched his jaw.

"Liar," he hissed. "You're all the same. I **won't** be."

"Feral whelp," Thor growled in exasperation. "Sounds like you're afraid of change yourself."

Loki snarled. The sound choked off in his throat at the next snap of Thor's hips.

Thor forced himself to hold back as he drove into him, struggling to keep his pace from turning mercilessly brutal. Loki still twisted in his grasp, cursing him whenever he found enough breath to do so.

But he soon ceased to have the air. Not long after that, Loki bit down the pelt beneath him, stifling his noises. He finally quit trying to twist his arms loose of Thor's grip; but he still squirmed beneath him. He hissed occasionally in discomfort.

When Thor realized he was frotting against the furs despite their coarseness, he let go of Loki's hair. Thor grabbed his hip instead, yanking him up just high enough to take the ability away.

It wrenched a desperate whine from the half-demon's throat as Loki fought him anew. A heavy shiver crawled up Thor's spine, making him groan and tighten his grip until his claws sank into Loki's flesh. Loki thrashed again. " **Thor**!"

He pressed his head hard against Loki's own and scraped his teeth over the tip of the half-demon's ear with his next thrust, dragging a shudder through Loki.

"If you're that starved," Thor told him heavily, "very well."

He unloosed his tail from Loki's leg and wrapped it across his hips instead, trapping Loki's cock against his torso.

Loki keened in shock and drove into the pressure. Thor grinned as he curled his tail over his side and tightened it, until Loki whimpered and shuddered and thrust again along the smooth underside.

Thor bit the cartilage of his ear once more to get his attention. "Is that enough for you?"

Loki panted raggedly. "I...."

Thor laughed and nuzzled the side of his neck, breathing in the thick pulse of his blood. "Not like being fucked by a human at all."

Loki managed to hiss at him for a breath before Thor pulled back.

Keeping to his set pace took restraint that bordered on insanity, leaving blood trickling down his throat as Thor worried the inside of his cheek again and reminded himself the half-demon was still not at his best. Thor's body was so tense from the effort that he felt like he was in the midst of a fight.

And yet it was worth it, to watch Loki shake apart beneath him. To claw open his arrogance and insolence and madness until all that was left to the little half-demon was his raw hunger, finally revealing the only part of Loki that Thor could understand. He would trade the taste of his blood to gain that.

The next time he rocked in, Loki writhed against him with a whine so desperate it bordered on a sob. Thor growled in pleasure as Loki's sweat-slicked back shifted against his chest.

Loki shuddered and squirmed again, wrenching wearily at the hold on his wrists. " **Thor**."

The plea was clear in his tone, clearer still in the tension quaking his frame and pulsing with his heartbeat. He needed more to come.

Thor shivered hard as he imagined denying it: of just ceasing his restraint and using the half-demon as he wanted until **he** was sated, and then keeping Loki teased and snarling and pleading until Thor was ready for a second rutting. By the time he **did** let Loki come, the little upstart would be so wrung through there'd be no disobedience left in him. Thor could finally put his hands to better use than holding him still.

Yet he had been telling Loki that words weren't necessary, and now the half-demon was finally listening. There would be other times.

Thor shifted his tail just enough to balance his hold, making Loki twist again with another whine. He kept Loki's arms pinned as they were, but reached down to cup his sac.

Loki gasped harshly, freezing up beneath him.

Thor nuzzled at his neck again as he rolled Loki's balls heavily in his hand, careful to keep his grip loose enough that his claws barely brushed the tight skin. A moan wracked through the half-demon; but that spike of fear remained.

Thor nudged gently at his nape. "Move, Loki. You won't be hurt."

Loki shuddered and wrenched harder at his wrists. "Thor. Let me--turn loose, I--"

Thor huffed against his neck, making Loki whimper; but he was already demanding far too much. He let go.

Loki gave a tiny relieved cry and squirmed his hands beneath him, pulling at Thor's own on his balls even as he gripped the head of his cock above Thor's tail. Thor made a warning rumble when Loki tried to pry his fingers away. "No."

Loki snarled feebly. " _Let_ \--"

Thor braced himself to drive in harder and choke the compulsion out before the sorcerer could finish it--but then Loki gagged as a vicious spasm wracked through him.

He slumped heavily against the pelts when it passed, eyes fluttering shut in exhaustion, trembling faintly. He made a high, panicked noise in the back of his throat.

Thor shuddered hard as he stared down at him, and barely managed to keep from tightening his grip. Loki's tremors worsened.

"I warned you, little half-demon," Thor said lowly, voice so rough with hunger he might as well have just snarled.

He ran his hand slowly down Loki's back, letting the sorcerer feel his claws dragging against his spine and the raised scar of an old bite wound near his side. Loki bit his lip to stifle another apprehensive noise, and Thor licked his mouth unconsciously. "You made your weakness worse trying to conceal it."

Loki shook his head, rasping for breath. "I...not...."

Thor huffed again, exasperated, even as he felt a tiny flicker of admiration. Maybe he **shouldn't** wish for a fight from Loki. The half-demon was apparently one of those who would force his opponent to slay him before he acknowledged defeat. That would be a waste of a life.

"Quiet," he ordered. Thor pulled his tail away and curled it around Loki's chest instead, smiling briefly when Loki made a debilitated, unhappy noise at the loss.

He settled over Loki's back and set his teeth deliberately on his neck once more. Then he wrapped his hand tight around Loki's own on his cock. Loki whined into the fur as Thor began to stroke him in tandem with his next thrust.

He was careful as he urged Loki to finish, driving him to his release with slower movements, aware that the half-demon had grown too exhausted to fight noticeably if he became hurt. Loki didn't even try to show Thor how he wanted his cock stroked; he just slumped against Thor's tail, eyes closed and cheek pressed to the furs as he panted, and let Thor do as he pleased.

Thor dragged him into coming sooner than he expected. Loki grew tenser beneath him, clenching his jaw for a few breaths before shuddering heavily with a groan and spilling over their hands. He went limp barely a few heartbeats later, sinking into Thor's grip with an enervated whine and trying to twist away from the touch.

Thor felt a twinge at how quickly Loki's pleasure rushed from him. Next time, he wouldn't let the little lunatic exhaust himself so deeply so soon.

He let go and wrapped his arm around Loki's waist, biting at the half-demon's jaw to distract him as he chased down his own release.

Loki whined half-heartedly, a sound that almost verged on annoyance, and swatted at Thor's hair where it had spilled over his face. Thor laughed reflexively at the gesture.

Then pleasure rushed through him as he realized Loki wasn't as broken down as he'd worried. If he still had the energy to spend being offended, the little upstart would recover with time and rest.

Loki whimpered thickly when Thor bit a little harder, tangling his fingers in what he could find of Thor's hair and giving a distracted yank. Thor growled again, rough and gratified, and caught the joint of Loki's neck between his teeth.

The pleasure coiled hot through him, shredding down his restraint as Loki jerked and gasped beneath him. The half-demon groaned under Thor's increased thrusts, a hand digging into the fur as he shook his head and whined wordlessly for relief. When another aftershock spasmed through him and made his hole clench tighter around Thor's cock, Thor gripped Loki against his chest as the pressure built rapidly within him.

The half-demon flinched and squirmed in his grip, his breath punched out in exhausted whimpers as Thor finished with him, **finally** subdued. When Loki clawed at his arm, Thor crushed him tighter to his chest and groaned at the thin, breathless keen Loki gave in response.

Loki shuddered as Thor bore his weight down on him while he came, making Thor sink his teeth deeper instinctively. Loki choked and pulled feebly at Thor's arm once more.

After the orgasm had wracked through him, Thor exhaled slowly and loosed his teeth from Loki's shoulder, nosing at the bruised flesh and a little sorry to find he hadn't broken the skin. Loki's bare foot grazed his own as the half-demon twisted against him with a resigned whine.

Thor gave him another pleased, encouraging sound. He loosened his grip enough that Loki could breathe.

Loki whimpered unconsciously in gratitude as he slumped to the furs and panted for air. Thor nuzzled his pulse in satisfaction.

A few breaths later, he began to languidly lick the sweat from the half-demon's neck and back. Loki shivered, and finally dropped his hand from Thor's arm.

By the time Thor's heartbeat was starting to calm, Loki had begun to struggle again in his grasp. "Hot. Thor...."

"Mn." Thor nipped at his shoulder before gripping Loki's hips to still him.

Once he'd tugged out Thor rolled them to the side, taking care not to drag his tail over Loki's bad thigh as he uncurled it. He let Loki pull away slightly when the half-demon squirmed across the pelts, but draped his arm over Loki's waist before he could go far. "Sleep."

Loki made a noise of near-disgust. "Too filthy. Let go."

Thor chuckled and settled his arm heavier over him. "I'll mark you again soon anyway. Sleep, Loki."

Loki made a small noise low in his throat.

But he either didn't or couldn't summon the energy to argue more. Thor hummed in contentment as the half-demon slumped to the pelts under his arm.

It wasn't long after before Loki's breath evened out in sapped slumber. Thor followed.  
  
  
The half-demon was still sprawled with exhaustion when Thor woke in the morning. He took pity and left Loki to rest as he went out.

He washed off in the stream before pacing his borders. His neighbor hadn't come any nearer again, though Thor heard him briefly behind a small butte.

He didn't bother calling a greeting this time. Loki's scent would still be on his loincloth, and the scar from his bite was still visible on Thor's arm. If he allowed that gossip to be spread, he'd be facing interlopers again as demons decided to test him.

When he returned to the temple with birds that afternoon, he caught Loki's scent among the ruins. The sorcerer had returned to the room where he'd dug up the bones the first time he'd intruded on Thor's nest.

He'd also climbed down into the valley.

Thor paced the edge of the mesa, a growl rumbling deep in his chest, studying the area below for signs of either tampering or a corpse. After circling it once, he found neither.

When he returned to his nest to leave the food before hunting down Loki, he found the half-demon sitting on one of the collapsed pillars outside the tunnel, stirring together the tallow and lye.

Thor stalked up to him with a low warning snarl, and checked him over for any signs of re-emerging madness.

He found none--on the surface, at least. Loki gave him a bemused, wry look when Thor caught his chin with his hand. "What now, demon?"

"Stay out of the valley," Thor ordered.

Loki arched an eyebrow. "Why? I didn't disrupt your day with anything. I merely went for a walk."

"You know why," Thor said shortly. He tilted Loki's chin up slightly, forcing him to bare his throat. "Stay out of there, sorcerer."

"Mm," Loki replied dryly. "If you're that possessive of a crevice, very well."

Thor gave him a hard look, but after a few more breaths he released him. Loki glanced back down at the jar and tapped the bone he'd been mixing with on the rim.  
  
  
He made Loki soak and pluck the birds to keep him in place. While the sorcerer was at it, Thor returned to the wall where he'd wedged the staff and worked it free. He carried to the highest standing pillar in the ruins instead and left it at the top, weighed down with stones and chunks of broken masonry so it wouldn't fly off. Loki watched him in silence as he jerked out feathers.

"You are wasting your time and mine," was all he said, when Thor returned. "I will reclaim it."

"I accept your challenge," Thor replied mildly.

He smiled a little when Loki's fingers tightened around the bird.  
  
  
By the time night fell, the meal was a forgotten memory and Thor was beginning to wonder how long his territory could sustain both his and Loki's appetites. Beside him, the half-demon was sprawled across the pelts and still breathing heavily, shivering a little as the sweat on his skin dried.

Thor finished licking clean the two new bites Loki had gouged into his arms, and rolled closer to see to the ones across Loki's own shoulders and spine.

Loki whined with exhaustion and curled in a little as Thor began to drag his tongue over his skin, but fight had yet to return to him. When Thor braced his hands on Loki's upper arms to stop his squirming, the half-demon obeyed and laid still as Thor cleaned him. He only hissed when Thor's tongue brushed against the split skin.

When Thor had gotten off most of the blood, he pushed himself up and studied his back. Loki shifted a little again at the increased pressure on his arms; Thor released him and settled on his knees.

"How much longer does your soap need?" he asked, carefully rubbing away a fresh dribble of blood from the deepest bite he'd given Loki, when the little upstart had gotten an arm loose long enough to claw open Thor's thigh with a goading laugh.

"Nn," Loki mumbled into the pelt. "A day. Covered. A few weeks once it's out."

Thor looked at the jar sitting in the far corner, draped over with a pelt. "Weeks?" he replied. "Is that why it looks different?"

Loki shook his head and rubbed wearily at the sweat near his eyes. "It's too soft," he answered. "No salt. But it'll burn until it's cured properly."

"Burn," Thor repeated, narrowing his eyes. He needed to move the wood away.

"Skin, not fire," Loki yawned.

Thor left him to rest until he was capable of making sense again, and moved the tinder. Loki curled more onto his side and snickered lazily as he watched.

Since the half-demon was showing his belly while drowsy, Thor held back an irked growl and instead only thwacked the old bite on Loki's back with the tip of his tail. "If you **want** more like that, I won't complain."

Loki just snorted and tucked his face in the crook of his arm. "It's different. A reminder."

Thor grinned in amusement and crouched beside him. "To not attack things stronger than you?" he smiled, reaching out to trace the scar with a claw. "It hasn't worked. You should have kept one you could see."

Loki pulled a face. "I didn't attack anything," he muttered into his arm. "We were horse-fighting. He cheated."

Thor raised an eyebrow. "You let him?"

The side of Loki's mouth curved up. "We were both cheating," he replied. "He did it better."

Thor snorted and shook his head. Loki snickered briefly.

But slowly the smile slid from his mouth. He kept his arm pressed over his eyes.

". . . I raised that damn horse from a foal," Loki muttered almost inaudibly. "I took it with me when I left. But as soon as I gave it to him, I might as well never--"

He broke off and clenched his jaw.

Thor rested his palm over the scar, watching what he could of Loki's face.

The half-demon was silent for a while longer. Eventually, he pulled his arm away and reached down to grab Thor's wrist.

Thor started to draw it back--but Loki tugged his hand up to his face. Thor frowned in confusion, then hissed when Loki bit down on the base of his thumb.

He growled out a brief warning. Loki caught his gaze, and then held it as he deliberately bit harder.

Thor jerked his hand free and shoved at Loki, rolling them over until he had the half-demon pinned against the furs. Loki grabbed a fistful of his hair and yanked him down to a harsh kiss, biting open Thor's lip.

Loki drew yet more blood as Thor took him rougher between the thighs this time, clawing his hands down Thor's back to spur him on and ripping into all he could reach of Thor's chest and shoulders and neck with his teeth. He arched and pushed down to meet each thrust without regard to his bloodied shoulders and back, until he finally wore himself out.

Thor didn't relent once he had. Not until he'd driven those unwanted memories from Loki's mind. Not until the complex, conflicting little half-demon was only thinking about the heat and drag of Thor's cock against him, and the weight of Thor's body crushing him down against the pelts. When Loki finally whined out a plea for a better touch on his own prick after he was done, Thor licked it roughly until he spilled. He let Loki fist his hands around his horns as he did.

Loki fell asleep almost immediately afterward, still sticky with their drying seed, while Thor was cracking open bones to get to the marrow. Thor gnawed several open and left them by him in the nest anyway.

Loki's dreams that night were ugly.

Thor woke at his shuddering, drowsily thinking that they were back running through the forest until he got his bearings. He rubbed his hands along Loki's body as hunger rumbled in his gut, spreading his scent further over the other demon's skin until Loki finally woke enough to grumble and kick him away.

When he drifted back into sleep, it was more pleasant. Thor dozed beside him without truly resting.

He wondered vaguely if Loki would even allow him to kill his enemy, no matter how terrified he was of being caught.

Thor touched the old scar on Loki's back lightly, and wondered if the sorcerer would turn on him after he did.  
  
  
Thor slept until midmorn the next day, recovering from a weariness he would never admit since it was from the exertion of forcing the over-confident little half-demon to submit. He only woke when hunger overcame it. Loki buried his head deeper in his arms as Thor crawled over him to leave their nest.

Most prey was already hidden for the day by this point, and wouldn't come out again until dusk. Thor went fishing.

Returning with Loki's share was more trouble than it was worth. Thor scowled to himself as he struggled to haul the fish back in the makeshift sack he'd turned his loincloth into, and decided Loki was going to start coming with him to hunt. His leg would be fully healed in another day if Thor took more care with him, and the half-demon didn't need to actually stay in the shelter of Thor's nest. Unless whoever had tried to cut his throat was another magician, they wouldn't be following Loki here.

Thor stuffed another fish back into the sack and reflected that it might well have been a magician. The woman at the inn had been one. Jane and her partners had been something like it. Loki clearly knew others.

He asked while Loki was pouring his soap into the various pieces of pottery Thor had scavenged, but the half-demon wouldn't answer. When Thor kept pushing, he finally huffed and said, "How pathetic would a sorcerer be to use a knife over magic?"

"They don't have to be pathetic," Thor replied. "Just angry at you."

Loki snorted.

A hot wind had come through, making it too stifling to keep a fire in the tunnel now that the half-demon was no longer prone to fevers. Loki made a small one outside in the ruins instead, using sticks to light it when Thor told him to stop wearing himself out with spells.

Thor settled on a nearby fallen pillar to sunbathe and watched closely as Loki grilled the fish, not trusting how easily the half-demon had obeyed. Loki had rolled his eyes at the order, but he hadn't tried to continue his spell or even argued with Thor. Either he was still ill and attempting to hide it, or this was a trap. Thor disliked both possibilities.

Loki stared out at the valley as he ate, watching the air above it steadily and chewing as though he didn't taste the food. Thor began to flick his tail back and forth slowly.

"It's going nowhere, sorcerer," he said.

"How do you know?" Loki replied.

"I pass by it each day," Thor said shortly. "It stops at the valley's edge."

"Most of it," Loki murmured, still staring outward. "The wind takes some. That barrier is very old."

Thor narrowed his eyes. "Stay out of the valley."

"I already agreed," Loki replied. He shifted his leg, propped out straight before him.

So it wasn't in there. "Leave the barrier alone, too. Wherever it is."

Loki gave him a slow, considering look over the fire. Thor stared back, holding the half-demon's gaze until Loki finally tched and glanced down to pull a charring fish from the flames.  
  
  
If it was a trap, Loki was playing it out longer than usual. If he was still feeling ill, he hid it well.

The half-demon remained relatively obedient over the next day: coming to Thor's nest on his own and sleeping there afterward without argument, fishing with him and collecting firewood while Thor hunted, carefully skinning the fine pelt of the wildcat Thor brought back in the evening so it could be preserved. He still slept poorly, but he kicked less when Thor woke him from his dreams. He made a tiny smirk whenever he caught Thor watching him warily.

Arrogant little whelp.

The next morning Thor left Loki in their nest to sleep away his exhaustion from their matings and took the water jars down to the stream. The half-demon had fallen asleep grumbling about needing to bathe **again** ; but since his soap was still curing, water was the best he could have. Though if last night hadn't finally stopped his smirking, Thor would begin making him stagger down to get it himself.

He was halfway to the stream when he saw the tracks to the east.

Thor dropped the jars and followed them, growling low. The ground was torn up from someone running desperately; he caught the scent of his neighbor, and blood.

And then only blood. It was smeared on the cliff wall where his neighbor had been pinned and killed. There were claw marks deep into the stone from the battle, and then sliding tracks to the side where the victor had dragged Thor's neighbor back toward its newly-claimed territory.

The demon's opponent had herded the fight into his lands. Or else his neighbor had tried to flee to him for shelter, but had been chased over the boundary and caught before finding his nest. Either way, it was a clear challenge that Thor was next.

He followed the sliding tracks and kept low to the ground, trying to pick out the scent of the new demon beneath the blood and dirt. When he reached the border, Thor crouched and stared across it, growling quietly to himself.

His neighbor's broken corpse was thrown carelessly on the ground beyond the waterfall, in a way that made no sense. There wasn't even a rudimentary effort at a burial, but the corpse wasn't being used as a marking line--unless the new demon was ceding territory. Or testing to see if Thor would take more.

Or feral.

He'd had no gossip, no news, for weeks now. Some demon might have gone rabid, or come back from a magician's service twisted into madness, clawing its way haphazardly through territories until it was brought down. It had happened before; trapping and killing the last one was how he'd met half of his former neighbors. It had taken three of them to end the beast.

Thor paced the border slowly until he finally caught another demon's scent--but it wasn't the one that had killed the other demon. This was new.

A third intruder. Someone coming to see if Thor had already been killed? The blood wasn't fresh. The last time he'd crossed this area was yesterday morning. He'd been spending too much time with Loki, not enough on watching his borders.

\--Loki.

The intruder's tracks were faint, but Thor knew his lands. The demon had headed toward the central part of them: toward the temple.

Thor loped rapidly back along the tracks, forcing down the urge to growl as he grew ever closer to the ruins and still saw no one else. The intruder wouldn't survive passing into the temple. The sorcerer might not have his staff, but he had other spells and Thor had let him keep his knife after yesterday. He was healed. He wasn't defenseless.

Thor reached the mesa and started curving around to the stone bridge, and then he finally saw the intruder. The demon was standing a short distance from the bridge, leaning on a tree limb, staring at the valley. He looked over when he heard Thor.

Thor paused for a breath at the sight of him.

He was old--older than Thor had ever seen, with a full grey beard and hair. Yet he was still fit and healthy-looking.

Thor forced himself to rock onto his feet and continue forward before the hesitation could signal weakness.

He cut off his growl before an edge crept in and strode toward the intruder, shaking his hair back from his eyes and curling his fists at his side. All the other times he'd called the hammer to him, it had been in his sight--how far away would it answer? Would it graze Loki as it came, or would it know better? Would it care? "Challenge accepted."

The intruder sank to a crouch and set down the limb before curling his tail around his leg. He let his arms dangle between his knees. "No challenge."

Thor snorted. "Have you grown so old you've forgotten the rules?" he derided; but he kept a wary eye on the demon as did.

The intruder was also missing an eye.

It was an old injury: a very old one by the look of the scar tissue, older than some of his other scars. And yet the demon had survived it, and then kept on living, and winning other battles, for years.

He would have to risk the hammer hitting Loki. A demon this strong was too dangerous to fight bare-handed. Thor knew his abilities, and he also knew where they ended.

He had never heard of a demon so old in their lands. Was it someone who'd never given mercy, never left any losers alive to speak of him? Or someone who'd been in the human world for years, until he was forgotten? Both?

There was at least one sorcerer out there more powerful than Loki, after all. One who had fought demons before.

"No," the intruder answered, still in his crouch. "I did not come here in challenge."

Thor kept his guard up. "Someone harried my neighbor into my territory and killed him here."

"It was not me," the demon continued. His heartbeat and his breathing were steady, even though Thor currently had the advantage if he sprang at him in an attack. As though he had no fear. Just how strong **was** he?

Beneath the tension, a small lick of interest ran up Thor's back. To fight **him** \--

"There's been stories of a rabid demon around here, the last few weeks," the intruder said, and Thor paused. "I didn't see it, but I suppose that's the one. I'll relay the truth after I leave."

Thor raised an eyebrow. "'The truth'?"

The intruder crooked the corner of his mouth slightly. "The demon they'd been naming was you."

Thor growled low in the back of his throat in annoyance--but he was not truly surprised. Once he lost communication with others, the worst possible rumors had been sure to spread. Especially after his absence.

"First we heard you were killed by that sorcerer crashing through here," the intruder added. "But then they said you'd been caught by him instead. And that you'd come back feral." 

Thor growled longer.

The other demon still showed no concern, and remained in his crouch. Thor tensed further.

Someone who could be so calm despite the worse position and a clear threat was either even stronger than he thought, or mad. He did not want to deal with another madman.

"It can happen to the best of us," the demon said. "Our worlds are separate, and strange to each other. Even a demon who could beat all the rest could fall to some trick of magic he couldn't predict."

Thor restrained the urge to shift on his feet, knowing it could signal the start of the fight. He lashed his tail. "What are you here for, old one?"

"I heard my son had died," he answered. "I came to see if it was true."

Thor was still.

Several long heartbeats later, he loosened his hands at his sides. The other demon uncurled his tail and settled his forearms on his thighs, but kept his hands dangling and remained in the crouch.

Thor agreed to the truce and sank to one himself, mimicking his posture. "What was his name?"

The other demon crooked the corner of his mouth again. "I don't know," he admitted. "I was gone before we named him." He lifted a shoulder negligently. "She'd bled a lot, giving birth. I worried. It made me careless."

Thor made a brief noise. A better reason than his own arrogance. "What did he look like?"

"A squalling whelp," the other demon answered, again with that faint smile. "...Blond, I think. Too young to be sure about the color of his markings."

Fandral. Thor nodded once and pushed out of his crouch. "He did die," he told the demon. He hesitated before adding, "I have his bones. If you want to bury them yourself."

The other demon lifted an eyebrow. "You kept them?"

"He was killed to get to me," Thor said--but that wasn't too far different from killing the demon himself, not when he was now sheltering the sorcerer who'd done it. Thor lashed his tail. "It...was the least I could do."

The other demon still seemed surprised. Was it not normal to want kin's bones? Thor had buried his mother. He had no children he knew of, but Volstagg and Brunhilde had buried one of their whelps that had died early. And they'd mourned her for weeks. Thor had thought that was how it was supposed to be.

But then, Volstagg had been powerful enough to live this high up, and yet had been friends with him and the others, had stayed with the same mate for years. Perhaps Thor and his former neighbors had all been the strange ones. Perhaps surrounded by each other, they just hadn't realized it.

"I would," the other demon said; and Thor's shoulders loosened slightly. "Thank you."

Thor, uncomfortable, just jerked his chin in acknowledgement.

"You'll have to wait here," he warned. "The temple is dangerous."

The other demon snorted quietly. "You don't say," he replied--but then he reached out a hand and held it over the valley, drifting his palm through the power without even a flinch. "You can sleep in this?"

Thor stared at him in silence and started to crouch again, this time into a spring.

The other demon saw it and brought his hand back, curling his tail around his leg once more. "Sorcerer's blood," he said, tapping the scar tissue around his eye. "Hate it or not, it has its advantages. I did not come here in challenge, Thor."

. . . He'd thought it was the hammer.

"I was bound to him a very long time," the other demon added, with a second negligent shrug. "Still tainted, I suppose. Not like I ever leeched myself. The longer it goes, the more potent it becomes."

Thor made another low, wary noise; but he uncoiled from his crouch.

"I'm here for my son," the other demon said. "You have his body; I can spread the news that you're neither rabid nor feral, and not the demon killing others. Fair barter?"

He would have given the bones anyway. But he wouldn't reject the opportunity to salvage his reputation. "Fair barter."

The other demon nodded. "Do you want help pulling him out?"

Thor frowned and looked at the temple.

He didn't want Loki to be seen. If it became known he was tolerating a half-breed sorcerer's presence in his nest, even just one kept in shelter, he would be indelibly marked as weak. He'd have no peace for years, having to fight every upstart who tried to claim his territory, having to throw out or kill every interloper who thought they could get away with scavenging on his lands. It would **make** him weak, eventually; too many injuries sustained in too short a time, and he would finally be killed by a demon he normally could have defeated. 

"I'm here for one reason only," the other demon said quietly. "Anything else is not my concern."

Thor realized abruptly that Loki's scent was still on him.

The fading scar to his ear, the permanent scar in his shoulder, the scratches and the bites from the previous night--all of it was clear. He hadn't thought of it; he'd been too focused on the tracks, the corpse, the perceived challenge. He was already marked.

"One reason only," the other demon repeated, still calm. "We set the barter, so let's both keep to the terms. Let me help; the sooner it's done, the sooner I can be on my way."

Thor gave him a long, distrustful look--but the alternative was to attack. And even if Loki heard and came out to aid, a demon such as this....

Before, he might have relished it despite the risk. Because of the risk. Even if he'd died, it would have been a story long retold.

But that was before. Now, there were no former neighbors to tell the tale. His name was ruined enough it wouldn't be believed. It would be a worthless death.

...And even if Loki escaped, he would still be running. With nowhere now to go, until he was run to ground by his enemy.

Thor lashed the tip of his tail rapidly, but then made himself stop and nod once sharply. "I'll keep the terms," he said tersely. "--They're not in a crevice. I buried him. If you can breathe here, you can help me dig them up."

The demon nodded and rose from his crouch, stretching slightly. His bones didn't pop when he did. He was very fit for his age.

Before, Thor would have relished the fight.

But what had changed had changed. He'd tried to go back when he'd returned here; it wasn't possible. Thor gestured for the other demon to cross the bridge, and followed.

Despite the tree limb the other demon used as he walked, Thor couldn't detect a limp or other ailment with his legs. A weapon, maybe? A strange one, though--Thor didn't even taste any magic on it that might explain why the other demon kept it. Had he just walked for a long time?

He led the other demon to the place where he'd buried his former neighbors. Thor paced it briefly as the other demon eyed the spot, trying to remember which place was Fandral's. He should have made markings; he had known he could be summoned away.

But he hadn't expected to be gone so long.

"This one," Thor finally determined, crouching beside the spot. He remembered resting against the wall after digging Volstagg's grave back up to add Brunhilde's bones, and thinking vaguely about Fandral while looking at the one lying next to it.

The other demon glanced around the area one last time, but then he picked up his tree limb from the pillar he'd leaned it against and came over. When Thor started digging up the dirt, the other demon joined him.

Fandral had never mentioned his parents, but that wasn't unusual. "What's your name?" Thor asked, as the two of them clawed up handfuls of dirt. Calling him 'old one' bordered on too insulting for a truce when they were strangers.

"Gest," the other demon answered.

Thor gave him another wary look over the grave. "I've never heard of you."

"I'm called a lot of names," Gest replied. He gave Thor another small, crooked smile as he tossed aside a clod of dirt. "I could run through them all, but we'd be done before then."

Thor paused from digging and frowned at him. "Why would you have so many?"

Nicknames weren't common except between kin or mates. A sorcerer would have to use his real name for any spellwork. And who wouldn't want to be known by their true name? How else would he gain a reputation in their--

"Hello, brother," Loki said tonelessly.

Thor turned his head and frowned in surprise at the half-demon's appearance. He was back in the clothes and jewelry Thor knew had been ruined, and something looked off with his face. Something besides the blank resignation there.

Gest rippled in his peripheral vision. Thor jolted and jerked back around.

The other demon was gone. A man--sorcerer--stood where he'd been, in human clothes and boots. The tree limb was now a staff like Loki's original one. The wash of magic left a cloying taste in Thor's throat.

He growled low and sank to a crouch.

" _Be still, Thor_ ," Loki said, his voice empty. "I told you you'd die."

\--So this was his enemy.

" **Liar** ," Thor snarled, glaring at the other sorcerer.

"I was invited in under honest terms," Gest--another lie?--replied, ignoring Thor as he spoke. The other sorcerer didn't take his eyes from Loki. "I heard my son had died. And then I heard worse rumors."

Thor continued to growl, even as the compulsion locked his muscles and weighed him down, making it impossible to move. Loki stepped past him, walking away.

"He nearly did once," Loki said, expression still unreadable. "You're welcome for saving him."

The other sorcerer made a tching noise and snapped his staff out in a quick, sharp movement. It just barely caught Loki in the heel of one foot.

The glamour around Loki shuddered and then unpeeled, leaving the half-demon looking as he did in truth: still weary, with only his boots and vambraces and ragged, stained pants, his exposed skin thoroughly marked by Thor's claws and teeth. Something remained wrong about his face.

The corner of Loki's mouth twisted in a grimace as he stopped, and he started to glower over his shoulder before catching himself. His brother moved toward him, then paused a good distance away when Loki's hands curved at his sides.

Thor could only partly see them now. Every time he tried to even just turn his head, an icy stab of pain shot down his neck until he was shaking badly enough that he had to quit.

"This was cold, even for you," the other sorcerer said evenly.

"Not really," Loki replied with a careless shrug.

His brother narrowed his eyes. "It was cold for who you once were."

"That was a long time ago," Loki answered.

It wasn't his face that was off--it was his ears. The half-demon had pulled his hair back, exposing his ears.

He never did that, except when washing his face or wiping away sweat. He never left it that way. Even in the shelter of Thor's nest, where he was known, he always combed it over them again to hide the tips after a few breaths. Thor tried flexing his claws into the dirt, and then stifled a pained noise as they practically peeled up from his fingers under the compulsion's burden.

" _ **Stop** , Thor_," Loki ordered, not looking over. Not taking his eyes from his enemy.

"I suppose it was," his brother replied. Something that wasn't truly a smile pulled at his mouth. "You were younger than I thought."

"Old enough," Loki said shortly.

The other sorcerer didn't respond. Loki shifted agitatedly on his feet and peeled his lips back further from his teeth.

"Leave me **be** , Odin," he ordered, his voice cracking in its harshness. "I'll do the same."

"Doubtful," his brother replied. "Besides, with the way you live your life? That would be a betrayal of my vow. You are running out of countries you may still enter."

"Kings die," Loki said, with a sharp gesture and an undercurrent of vicious pleasure. Thor caught the faint glint of the knife hidden in the straps of his vambrace. "Time passes. And so long as they keep letting **you** slip into their homes, they can't very well bar me, can they?"

Odin narrowed his eyes again.

Thor finally stopped fighting the compulsion, letting himself be sunk to his knees and forearms under the weight. He ceased straining his muscles, and kept himself coiled and still, waiting. Odin gave him the barest glance from the corner of his eye.

Loki seized on it, ripping the knife loose and going for the other sorcerer's thigh. " _Save--_ "

The pillar Odin had been resting his staff against shuddered and then collapsed.

Thor tried to throw himself aside, but the compulsion kept him locked in place. The pillar exploded as it fell, making him snarl in pain as it threw dust in his eyes and rained stones on his back and arms. He heard Loki give a choked scream.

The compulsion let him blink, but not shake his head nor wipe his face. By the time Thor could see through the haze of dust and tears, Odin was crouched beside Loki and lifting away the debris trapping him.

Loki struggled to laugh as Odin removed a chunk of stone from his chest: a frightening, gurgling noise. Thor recognized the sound of blood in the lungs--the half-demon had **no sense** when to yield--

"Where's..." Loki gasped, staring up at his brother, a sneer twisted wide across his face and showing the blood between his teeth, "vaunted finesse...."

" **Enough** , Loki," Odin hissed, wrenching aside another chunk of masonry.

Even through his aches Thor could hear the weariness in the other sorcerer's voice now. He was weaker than he'd pretended, far more exhausted than Thor had thought--if he could just **move** \--

Odin looked at him when he snarled.

Loki spat out something vicious and painful-sounding, but Odin pressed a hand hard over his mouth before he could complete the spell. The other sorcerer muttered something beneath his breath; Thor caught the scent of more blood as Loki bit through his palm.

Loki soon shuddered and slumped against the ground with a grimace, legs and arm still trapped beneath the shattered pillar. Thor saw him mouthing words as Odin stood and moved toward him, but he couldn't hear anything. Loki banged his head against the ground and screamed, but it was still silent. His voice was gone.

Thor growled deeper as Odin crouched in front of him.

"Cold," the other sorcerer repeated, mouth turned down as he stared at his shoulder, looking at the spell on Thor and not at him.

"This won't do," Odin continued; and then he dug his fingers into the scar.

Thor's growl rose to a shriek of pain as the magic seared through him. He hadn't realized how deep Loki's spell had entwined with his flesh.

Odin ripped it out, bit by bit, stripping it from his bones and sieving it from his blood and carving it away, slowly and carefully, from his joints and organs and teeth. The compulsion kept him in place to the very end, holding him down for the torture, no matter how desperately Thor tried to thrash and writhe and break free. He choked on dust as he screamed his throat raw.

When Odin finally wrenched the last bit of the spell out through the scar, Thor collapsed on the dirt. Past the other sorcerer, obscured by the tears and pain blurring his sight, he saw Loki struggling to shove more of the broken pillar off his trapped arm. He was coughing up blood.

Odin laid a heavy hand over his forehead and eyes, stripping Loki from his sight.

" _Sleep_ ," he ordered quietly. " _And heal_."

Thor fought the spell but lost.  
  
  
When he woke, the sun was sinking past the mountains. Thor rolled slowly to check that nothing in him was broken, and then staggered to all fours. Every muscle ached; he could barely walk.

There was a spattered trail of blood where the lying invader had dragged Loki away from the shattered pillar, before both their scents disappeared near the edge of the mesa. Fandral's grave had been touched no further. The stones in the tunnel had been moved, and the doors resealed. Atop the pillar where he'd placed it, Loki's staff was charred to ruin.

Thor tamped the dirt back over Fandral's grave. A storm passed by overhead, letting him wash out his eyes and shoulder without having to crawl his way across the bridge to a stream.

He rammed the pillar he'd stored Loki's staff on top of until the remaining chunks of blacked wood fell to the ground, and gathered up the largest handfuls. He shoved them beneath the pelts of his nest before collapsing in exhaustion.  
  
  
When he woke again, it was a midday. Thor crossed into his murdered neighbor's territory to bury the corpse, and found that it wasn't one.

Enough time had passed that the spellwork had begun to unravel. It wasn't a puppet made of many parts and painted over with a glamour, as Loki's had been; it **was** a demon, once. But then it had been killed and called back and reused. Thor caught Odin's scent on the inside of the skin.

He carried it out of the area and over the border to the next demon.

He had to stay at a far distance until he could convince her he hadn't come in challenge. Odin had lied about many things, but apparently not this: Thor had been marked as caught by a sorcerer, and taken for feral on his return. There was too much magic leeching through the place he kept his nest; he must be either feral or no longer a demon at all.

When she finally agreed to a wary truce, Thor showed her the corpse and relayed all he could of Odin: his scent, his false and true speech, his lies, his appearance, the bits of information he'd gleaned from Loki. It marked him further as weak; but the demon agreed to come with him to warn her own neighbors, and soon the news spread past their borders and further out along the demons' lands, trickling down to the outskirts.

Odin would not find it so easy to slink into their world the next time he tried.

Days passed.  
  
  
Soon, the land around his borders that the puppet-demon had claimed was taken by others. Everyone had to eat.

Thor defended his boundaries viciously until almost no one still attempted to cross them despite the gossip. He struggled to behave right in truce-company, but he noticed that other demons crouched farther from him than was normal during it, and that they always eyed him warily. He missed his former neighbors even more.

He kept Loki's soap in its molds in the tunnel, letting it cure. He kept the chunks of his staff beneath his pelts, shoved up against the wall so they didn't disrupt his sleep. He searched for the hammer, but couldn't find it.

The temple no longer leaked magic after Odin's departure, but the power that had been trapped in the valley remained there, slowly trickling across the rest of the land as the wind took it.

Thor worked open the first two doors of the tunnel again out of stubborn pride, but kept his nest near the entrance. It was too hard to breathe in the old place anymore. And the weariness that would wend into him if he spent too long in the spot wasn't natural.

Weeks passed.  
  
  
He didn't know how to tell when the soap was usable, so he pushed it all into a corner and left it. He buried the blackened chunks of Loki's staff that hadn't already crumbled apart on the opposite side of the temple from the graves of his friends.

He spent a morning summoning the hammer. At long last, he heard it deep below, grinding against one of the doors and the new seals. Soon after, he felt the leak of power begin again, trickling slowly up the tunnel and making Thor shudder as it brushed over his skin.

He stopped wishing for the hammer and told it to go back to the place it had been. It seemed to work; at the least, the leak ceased and things grew no worse.

More weeks passed.  
  
  
He had failed to keep his obligation to the half-demon, and he regretted it. Loki had come to him for protection and had been taken after Thor was beaten by his enemy. A different enemy than the one the half-demon had sought shelter from; but that detail was pointless. Thor had been beaten so easily because he was crippled by Loki's compulsions; but that detail was pointless. Thor had promised him shelter and then let Loki be taken from it. He regretted it.

But he could not bring himself to mourn for the sorcerer. His friends' graves still lay in the ruins. His reputation was still permanently tainted as one caught by a magician. His neighbors still distrusted spending too much time near him after what Loki and Odin had both done to the demons' lands.

His life had been simple and enjoyable and fuller before Loki had entered it. Now, it was complex and monotonous and he again had new neighbors who--no matter how interesting or strong or clever--could not replace the former ones.

Now, he had been changed, in his flesh and in his thoughts.

The more he tried to reintegrate himself, the more he felt an impenetrable barrier kept him separate. He had no good tales now for company, and few wanted to hear his stories from the human world: mostly whelps who asked and then didn't believe half of it. Thor and a few of the other demons who'd been captured by magicians had once tried to work out a map of the human world from the places where they had all been, during one long, humid summer day when a flash flood had forced many demons to temporarily suspend their boundaries and relocate to highest ground.

But even among them, Thor felt at unease. They had all returned to the demon world after killing their captors.

Thor described the places he had seen and discussed Erik and Jane and Darcy in their presence. He did not speak about Loki.

He made stock sometimes, experimenting with it until it was closer to the flavor he remembered from Darcy's instructions. Raw meat still tasted better.  
  
  
He caught Loki's scent among the ruins one afternoon when he returned from hunting.

Thor stalked the entirety of the temple, searched the tunnel for signs of opened doors, and scanned the valley, but he couldn't find the half-demon. The scent was still fresh; half a day old at most. It lingered carelessly--or challengingly--on the pillar where Thor had once stored Loki's staff.

Thor paced beside his nest for a long time into the night, debating. At last, he climbed to a high alcove overlooking the ruins and curled up there to sleep.

He hated the shame of being driven out by a silent threat; but he had let Loki become too familiar with his den. Odin had injured him in many ways, but he had also removed the half-demon's spell. Thor would not risk becoming a slave again out of pride.

He had changed so much that sometimes he could not remember why he'd behaved the way he had as his former self.

He thought once more of the things Odin and Loki had said to each other, and the things that had been unsaid between their words. He slept fitfully.  
  
  
It was barely dawn when he woke, the sky still more gloom than light. Loki sat huddled against the opposite wall below, watching him.

Thor stared back, holding his gaze without moving.

Loki had no staff he could see, though it might be hidden by the cloak he sat on. His clothes looked as though they'd been clean and new before he'd hiked his way into Thor's lands, but they were abnormally plain for the sorcerer: his only ornamentation was a silken band wound around one wrist. He seemed like he'd been well-fed while he was gone. His mouth was scarred.

At last, Loki broke the stare for a breath before glancing back over, forcing the edge of his mouth into a smirk. "This will grow tedious after a few hours."

"Why are you here?" Thor replied, unwilling to surrender the higher ground.

Loki lifted a shoulder carelessly and picked at the cord around his wrist. "I felt it wise to leave that world for a while. It's growing very inhospitable. Brothers killing brothers, wars coming. Best to travel elsewhere for a few years."

That madness was back in him. Thor narrowed his gaze, trying to determine how deep it ran this time.

"He'll come for you here," he warned. "If you try to curse me again, you'll be taken again."

That pained, twisted smile pulled higher at Loki's mouth. He plucked at the cord once more. "Oh, I think he's going to be too busy to chase me."

"Were you this mad before you came here?" Thor asked. "Or is this place making you it again?"

"I'm not mad," Loki muttered. "I've never been mad."

Thor made a disagreeing noise and finally stretched, settling into a crouch. Loki shifted at the movement, but stayed in his seat against the wall. They watched each other warily once more.

The sun had broken the horizon and begun crawling across the sky by the time Thor slowly climbed his way down from the alcove.

Loki kept his eyes on him as Thor came closer, but didn't move. He pulled his legs a little nearer to his chest when Thor reached the ground, then clenched his jaw to hide a wince.

Thor noted the sign of weakness. Loki stared at him over the arm propped on his knees, his hand curled just loose enough that it wasn't a fist.

It was his feet, Thor determined. They were probably blistered--there was a smell of old, dried blood from his shoes. He might have been kept clean and cared for in his imprisonment, but he'd walked for long enough that his clothes were muddy and worn, his hair and skin dirt-stained where sweat hadn't made it trail away. There were more traces of others' blood on his knives. He smelt like a fighter and a half-demon; he didn't smell like a sorcerer.

"Where's your magic?" Thor asked.

Loki closed his eyes and drew a slow breath through clenched teeth.

"Returning," he grit out. "In time."

Thor paced him in a careful half-circle, studying the bags under his eyes and the scars around his mouth. Loki tracked him with his eyes, his hand dropping a little closer to the knives in his belt, still stopping just shy of becoming a true challenge.

Thor paced one last time and then settled on his haunches in front of him. "You've done many unwise things, half-demon," he pointed out, "but this is the worst."

"No," Loki said, very quietly. "No, it is not."

Thor gave him a look. "If I were stripped of my horns and teeth and claws, I wouldn't seek out you."

"Of course not," Loki replied, the corner of his mouth edging up again. "Between the two of us, you are the one with the soul, right, demon?"

Thor made an annoyed noise. The corner of Loki's mouth lifted higher, and for a fleeting moment the amusement there looked genuine.

But then it slipped away once more, submerged under the blank mask Loki was struggling to hold.

Thor tilted his head slightly as he studied him. No matter how he tried to hide it, the half-demon was skittish, mistrustful, strained. There was anxiety seething behind his eyes, pulsing through his scent with each heartbeat.

It wasn't from Thor's closeness. Loki had clearly fought predators before getting here. It was from what he'd left behind; what he'd done to escape. What he was still running from.

No wonder every demon who returned from a magician's servitude was taken for feral in the beginning, if they all looked like this when they first returned. The memory of a cage took a long time to forget.

It would be worse if Loki had still refused to kill his enemy before fleeing.

Thor knew it would be worse. The cage wasn't a memory then. It was a threat, always out there, always able to return one day. Always ready to snap closed if your guard dropped.

He should just rip the sorcerer's throat out now while he had the advantage.

"Why are you **here**?" Thor repeated roughly.

"I cannot stay in that world," Loki answered. He curled his hands into fists. "Not right now. A few years, and it should be over."

Thor narrowed his eyes, glancing at Loki's shaking hands before returning to his face. "What should?"

Loki jerked his shoulders again. "A prophecy. Nothing."

Thor gave him a level look.

Loki snickered harshly through his teeth, a high, sharp sound that put Thor's skin on edge and made him set his feet reflexively. He wrenched harder at the cord around his wrist. "I should have known. He keeps his poisons close."

"What is that?" Thor asked.

"Nothing," Loki repeated, lips pulled back from his teeth. "Nothing anymore."

"This is going to become tedious in a few hours," Thor said dryly; and Loki gave a short bark of real laughter.

He fell quiet a few breaths after, staring past him.

Thor remained in his crouch and waited. He ignored the voice of sense urging him to get rid of the threat now before he was chained again.

Loki eventually pulled the cord loose from his wrist, and Thor realized with surprise and wariness that it wasn't fabric as he'd thought. It was metal. Loki twisted it in his fists for a long moment, and swallowed hard.

"I cannot be in that world right now," he made himself repeat, almost inaudibly; and finally Thor was certain that the half-demon was asking for shelter.

He studied Loki in silence.

Some of the blood on his knives was demons'. He could easily have carved out a space for himself in the outskirts; if his magic really was returning with time, he could have moved a little higher, claimed an area big enough to mostly feed him, used distance or a spell to conceal what his scent would betray. Thor knew Loki was more than strong enough to live comfortably and without fear there.

And yet he'd wearied himself climbing higher, trespassing across who knew how many demons' territories, to get back here. To return to Thor's lands.

Loki never had finished his final order that day. Occasionally--before he'd made himself try to stop thinking of the sorcerer--Thor had wondered which of them Loki had been about to tell him to save.

Then again, he knew the half-demon was a manipulator.

Thor held out a hand. When Loki eyed it, looking wary but also genuinely unsure, Thor jerked his chin at the cord.

Loki hissed out another low, slow breath; but he made himself drop it into Thor's palm. Thor started to sniff the metal and then wrenched his head back, nearly dropping it.

It reeked of magic, of wolf's blood and agony, piss and excrement and raving hunger, entrapment, devouring rage. Thor coughed and had to spit twice to get the taste from his throat, and even then it lingered.

"It's not exact," Loki said, as Thor wiped his mouth with his arm. His eyes were too wide again. "But the pieces are close enough. I never knew what an enemy he'd made. I can't be in that world or it'll suck me in too, playing that damned part." He curled his hands into fists. "It's close enough. I wouldn't be **here** if it weren't close enough."

He said the words as if they had a different meaning. Thor gave him another long look.

"You can leave," he said finally.

Loki's mouth twisted up in another mirthless grin as he stared past him. "I'd come back."

At first Thor thought this was something else the half-demon didn't understand. Thor had released him from the burden Loki had laid on himself upon setting foot in his territory: the obligation to either make a challenge or offer a barter or seek protection. He could leave, still free, and make his own territory.

But then Loki curled his hands around his arms, his fingers tensed like claws, and went on.

"It's already set," he hissed. "Out of order, but set. Not as painful as it should have been, but still a prison. We traveled together. It's set on us all. I could bind myself down so I stayed away, and eventually I'd gnaw off my arm and still come back. All because he would not stop seeking **wisdom** ," Loki spat. "Damn fool."

A slow tension crawled up Thor's flesh, leaving him chilled. Instinct told him to flee now. This was beyond rabid; this was something unknown.

It took more will, and pride, and stubbornness, than he would ever admit not to back away.

"You are mad," Thor said carefully.

Loki snorted hollowly and closed his eyes.

"No," he replied, tone slow and weary. "I just see too much."

He lifted his mouth in another painful smile. "Maybe if I ripped out an eye it would only be half so unbearable. There must be **some** thing he's done, to stay sane so long."

"Loki," Thor started.

The half-demon squeezed his eyes shut tighter and bared his teeth. " **No** ," he snarled. "Let me stay here or I'll kill you and take it."

"You are terrible at this," Thor replied with exasperation, half aggravated by the insult and half uncomfortable with the vulnerability it failed to conceal.

Loki forced a snicker but still wouldn't look at him.

Who issued a challenge and then kept his eyes shut afterward? Thor lashed his tail and rubbed a hand hard against his face. A **newborn** had more survival instinct.

"My territory cannot feed us both," he said.

Loki peeled his lips back further from his teeth.

"Once you heal, we'll have to take more," Thor finished. "You'll have to prove you're a decent hunting partner first."

The half-demon blinked once, and then stared at him.

It was something Thor had begun to think of a few times before, when Loki was first sheltered in his nest, before he made himself stop. The land he held now couldn't feed them both for long; and he was exhausted with this place. His neighbors were gone, the territory was still recovering from too much depopulation--he had very little incentive to stay.

" **If** you are a decent partner," Thor said, shifting into a deeper crouch just in case the half-demon took advantage now and attacked, "we'll have to head south. And you'll have to pace half of the land we take. I can't do it all."

Loki still stared at him.

Thor huffed. "Do you understand?"

". . . Yes," Loki said, looking as though the word was unnatural to form. "...I can do that."

Thor nodded once, shortly. "Heal first. If your magic is coming back, that should help." He paused, and then added, "If you try to trap me again, I will kill you."

Loki continued to stare at him for a long moment, before lifting the corner of his mouth. "Oh, I'm sure you'll try."

"I will," Thor said gutturally.

"I accept your challenge," Loki replied, grinning a little wider.

Thor glowered at him.  
  
  
Loki staggered badly when Thor pulled him to his feet. He barely managed to walk to the tunnel, collapsing to a sitting position again at the mouth of it. He keened in the back of his throat as Thor worked his shoes gingerly off his swelled and blistered feet.

"You shouldn't have kept these on so long," Thor told him, tossing the second shoe over his shoulder. He cupped Loki's calf and lifted his leg to examine the sole. "They're more trouble than they're worth. You would have been better off barefoot."

"In this terrain?" Loki retorted, apparently not in enough pain to forget how to be derisive. "Look at my feet and then look at yours, demon."

"My name is Thor," he replied.

Loki was silent as Thor wiped and licked away what grit and dried blood he could.

When he spat the last of it to the side, Loki muttered, "I'd have been worse off. I wouldn't be able to get them on again, and then I'd be even more disadvantaged in an attack. I had to sleep sometime."

"True," Thor said after consideration. He set Loki's leg back on the ground and reached for the other. "You still could have taken them off once you were here."

"Then I'd be even more disadvantaged in an attack," Loki repeated, quieter.

"...True," Thor agreed again. They had not parted well.  
  
  
He left Loki in the tunnel and went to hunt breakfast himself. The half-demon was sleeping fitfully on a pelt he'd wrenched out of Thor's nest when he returned, curled in with an arm draped over his legs.

Thor set the fish he'd brought back and the water jug he'd filled beside him, and left again to pace his boundaries.

He buried Loki's tracks and scent when he found them, and made a note to check this part of the border more frequently. He could see more of the half-demon's tracks on the other side, but he didn't smell blood on the wind. Loki might have slipped through this neighbor's territory without posting a challenge. The demon would want news sooner than later.

The neighboring territory was to the northwest, so a fight with its holder would be purposeless. If Loki wasn't a burden as a hunting partner, he and Thor had to move south. It was technically a climb down in the demons' lands; but the vegetation was lusher further south, meaning more--though smaller--prey. And more supplies, wood for cooking, plants for injuries and clothing and supplementing the meat. There was a large river to the southeast Thor remembered settling by for a time during his climb upward; how far had the cliff been from it? How had the land been divided since he'd left? They would have to claim a sizable portion of the river and then expand their territory outward, with the water and that decent cave at its heart.

 **If** the half-demon wasn't a burden.  
  
  
Several days later, Loki's feet and mind were as healed as they could be. Thor had killed the neighbor whose territory Loki had trespassed on before he could warn others about the half-demon's scent, and he used that area to gauge how well Loki could hunt.

Loki had his disadvantages: no claws, no horns, no tail, blunt teeth. He was also still visibly weary from struggling to mold and manipulate the power trapped in the valley during yesterday.

Thor had sat back and let him try as Loki cursed ceaselessly under his breath, twisting his fingers in the air, trying to tease and pluck and yank out what he wanted. Thor made him stop after Loki had grown so pale his demon markings began to stand out and he'd started swaying.

He'd had to stop him twice more from sneaking out that night and attempting it again. Thor had been allowing Loki to sleep in his own place, but after the second time, he forced the sorcerer into his nest so he could keep him pinned down. Loki bit and kicked longer than was wise, but eventually, with Thor's bulk draped over his back and Thor's forearm across his neck, he stopped hissing and struggling and at last drifted into sleep.

The sooner they left the temple, the better.

Despite his flaws, Loki was a fair hunter. He threw his knives with skill; and Thor knew he would be twice as deadly once he could throw his spells again too.

"Decent," Thor determined, as they watched the boar's death-throes from a large boulder. It had already charged twice despite the blades in its back and thigh; the two now in its neck had hopefully finished it.

Loki made a face. "I'd be better with a bow."

"I don't have that," Thor replied. There had been an unstrung one in the trunk in the storage room at the end of the tunnel; but if Loki didn't remember, Thor wasn't going to mention it. The magic in the wood had smelled treacherous. And the sooner they left the temple, the better. "You'll have to make do."

Loki tched under his breath and kept scowling at the boar.

Thor rose from his crouch and pressed his nose to the pulse behind Loki's ear, checking his scent and disregarding the half-demon's startle. He'd lived in the human world far too long; he still reflexively connected the action with sex.

Thor didn't particularly mind. He ignored the spike in Loki's heartbeat and focused on the magic in his blood. It had been gradually but steadily returning over the days. It was renewing as the sorcerer rested and recovered; but it still wasn't nearly what it had once been.

"You'll be better with your spells," Thor added. "How much longer?"

Loki lifted a shoulder. "I could use them now, if I had to. But I'd rather wait." He set his jaw. "Better than trying too soon and exacerbating it."

Thor, nose still pressed to his skin, smiled slowly and rested a hand on his spine.

Loki made a disgruntled sound and tensed faintly to hold down a shiver. Thor smiled a little wider, and then pulled away to check on the boar.

It had collapsed to its side on the dirt, only twitching its front legs now. Thor leapt off the boulder and started toward it; behind him, Loki muttered a derogatory comment as he slid down as well. Thor flicked the tip of his tail at him.  
  
  
Thor methodically battered down two walls and then laid the stones over his former neighbors' graves, one final layer of protection for them against any sorcerer who managed to get into the temple. He didn't want anyone to dig up their bones and use them as puppets.

After he was satisfied with the work, a couple weeks later he and Loki left.

It had been a long time since he had traveled; he'd grown used to having possessions. Thor finally rolled up the most impressive of his pelts and carried it with him draped over his shoulder. He left the rest behind.

Loki took the remaining pot of his soap and another jug full of water, tying them together with that metal ribbon of his. He'd set a spell to keep both from sloshing out of their containers, using far more blood than he'd needed to last time. He'd rolled his eyes when Thor frowned in concern.

Thor made Loki stay back as they crossed the border and he issued the first request to pass through to their neighbor, and was glad he'd done so when it turned into a challenge. He'd told the half-demon what he could about how to behave in their world, but some things had to be learned by experience.

The fight was shorter than it should have been. A tiny, almost infinitesimal spark lit his opponent's loincloth during the battle; and while he was distracted trying to roll it out, Thor seized the opportunity and killed him, and then glared at Loki.

The sorcerer only grinned back, rubbing his fingers together.

Thor growled a warning, but otherwise let it go. If Loki was a cheater, well, he had known that before.

He tore a long strip from the corpse's loincloth and gestured Loki over. When he came, Thor handed it to him. "Keep your hair back," he ordered. "You have to start showing your ears. You can't keep looking so human."

Loki raised an eyebrow and rubbed his thumb along the fabric. "It's better to look a half-breed than human?" he questioned after a few breaths.

Thor deliberated.

"Yes," he eventually determined. "Better to show you have some demon in you than to look like there's none at all."

Loki raised the brow higher, but he pulled his hair back and started binding it. "'Better' for who?"

"Both of us," Thor answered, stretching deeply before shaking out his arms.

"Very well," Loki replied, with the start of a tiny grin on his scarred mouth. They'd been old enough that the power in the temple's ruins hadn't been able to heal them further. "I suppose mates are partners, after all."

Thor scowled in his direction but didn't meet his eyes or contradict him, making Loki grin wider.

"Quit smirking and look for his nest," Thor growled, turning aside. He heard Loki laughing quietly as he started the search.  
  
  
Within several weeks, they'd reached the river, claimed it and the cliffside cave, and defended the area for long and well enough that they could start expanding their borders. Within a few months, their territory was sufficiently sizable that they were both well-fed.

Soon, everyone in the demons' lands knew their names. Their territory was wider than what any other mate pair or group had managed to hold before, the circuit of the borders a three-day's trek: Loki had steadily seeded enough spells into their boundary lines that any demon who managed to get through them was too crippled to be a threat before it was found.

Later, demons stopped trying. Within a year, none but the reckless or those with something to prove dared to challenge them.

Eventually, it ended.

Thor woke one dawn and found their nest empty. Loki was gone; the metal ribbon he'd carried like a talisman all these years was gone; the sack he'd dried from a bear's stomach and the bow he'd cut from a sapling and the clothes he'd made from the fibrous plants by the river were gone. The staff painstakingly carved from an ancient tree that Loki had made an idiotic expedition into a neighbor's territory to cut down was gone. The earrings Thor had helped him pierce into his ears long ago were sitting on the pelt beside him, in the place where Loki had been sleeping last night.

Next to them lay a small bone amulet tied to a leather cord, intricately carved and full of so much magic Thor had to squint to look at it. He'd seen Loki cutting it intermittently over the last few months, after taking the vertebra from a huge boa he'd made another idiotic expedition into a neighbor's territory to trap.

On a cracked bone next to the pelts was cut _Avoid snakes_.

Thor sat in their nest and stared at everything for a long time.

Finally, he picked the amulet up and studied it warily for a while. He'd never learned to discern the subtleties of magic enough to read its types, despite Loki's occasional efforts to teach him. Thor could only tell if magic was present, and if it was harmful to him or not. The amulet was not.

He tied it to one of his armbands. He gathered the earrings in his palm and dropped them into the sack that Loki had made for him, letting them fall to the bottom. He didn't need to carry many things; they probably wouldn't be crushed out of shape before the time when the half-demon grew tired of acting human again and decided to live in the demons' lands once more. For a while.

Thor tightened the sack's drawstrings harshly.

Then he exhaled through his teeth, and went out to catch breakfast and plan what to do about the territory that was now far too large for just himself.

He wouldn't stay here waiting. The size was against him now, and he wasn't going to trust that the spells in the boundaries would last with the sorcerer gone. Whenever Loki felt like returning, he would just have to find Thor again.

It had been a good six years.  
  
  


Three winters with no summer between; three winters of great wars.  
And then the role must be played.


End file.
